A former Roman Catholic bishop who has promised to help the poor led Paraguay's presidential election Sunday and appeared poised to quash more than six decades of one-party rule, according to exit polls and early official results. But Fernando Lugo's main rival, ruling-party candidate Blanca Ovelar, disputed the exit poll results and vowed to wait for the final official results. A win by the 56-year-old Lugo, dubbed the "bishop of the poor," would smash the 61-year grip on national power by the Colorado Party, which has endured through dictatorship and democracy to become the region's longest-ruling party. It would also be the latest in a series of leftist, or center-left, governments elected to power this decade in South America.

Ovelar, a 50-year-old former education minister and protege of outgoing President Nicanor Duarte, is vying to become Paraguay's first female president.

With 6,150 of about 14,000 polling sites counted, Lugo had 40 percent to 32 for Ovelar and 22 for Oviedo, election officials said. Four exit polls also showed Lugo winning by margins ranging from 3 to 6 percentage points. The polls had margins of error of 2 percentage points.

Supporters of Lugo set off volleys of fireworks and honked horns in impromptu traffic jams across the Paraguayan capital after the exit poll results were released. Lugo made a succession of appearances at his campaign headquarters before cheering sympathizers.

"Ole, ole! Lugo triumph!" his supporters chanted.

After the partial official results were released, Lugo appeared a second time and told the crowd: "You are on the ones to blame for the joy of the majority of Paraguayans."

"This is the Paraguay that I dream of - of many colors, many faces," he said in reference to his center-left coalition, Patriotic Alliance for Change.

Ovelar refused to concede, however, arguing that the exit polls were concentrated in urban areas and that her own polling in rural areas showed her garnering more votes.

"We are going to await the provisional official results from election authorities," said Ovelar.

News broadcasts showed two minor scuffles outside polling places Sunday, but officials said voting was peaceful and without serious incidents. Voting was compulsory for Paraguay's 2.8 million registered voters.

The Colorado Party has endured through democracy and dictatorship in this poor, agrarian South American nation, in power even longer than Cuba's Communist Party.

Eight months ago, Lugo welded leftist unions, Indians and poor farmers into a coalition with Paraguay's main opposition party to form the Patriotic Alliance for Change.

Lugo then launched a charismatic campaign in which he blamed Paraguay's deep-seated economic woes on decades of corruption by an elite that ruled at the expense of the poor in a country of subsistence farmers.

At stake in Sunday's presidential vote is the political course of a country whose single-party reign began in 1947.

Lugo, if elected, would become the first former bishop elected president.

He resigned as bishop in December 2006 to sidestep Paraguay's constitutional ban on clergy seeking office. Lugos says he was influenced by the liberation theology frowned upon by the Vatican. But he declares he is neither on the "left" nor the "right," but leads an independent, pluralistic coalition.

Lugo has distanced himself from the region's more radical leaders, such as Venezuela's Hugo Chavez, despite efforts by his opponents to link them.

"Chavez is a military man and I have a religious background," Lugo told reporters in Washington last year. "My candidacy has arisen at the request of the people, it was born in a different way than Hugo Chavez's."

Fueling his charge was voter disenchantment with 13 percent joblessness in South America's poorest country after Bolivia. Some 43 percent of the 6.5 million Paraguayans live in poverty, and many survive on a meal a day.

More than 100 international observers, including the Organization of American States, were monitoring the vote. Paraguayans were also voting to seat a 45-member Senate, an 80-member lower House of Deputies and 17 governors.

Written By BILL CORMIER

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