Paraguayans to vote for president

(CNN) -- More than 2 million Paraguayans will head to the polls Sunday for the country's presidential election, which could see the end of six decades of power for the ruling Colorado Party.

President Nicanor Duarte Frutos has been in office since 2003.

The leading candidates in the presidential field are Fernando Lugo, a self-described independent backed by the Patriotic Alliance for Change; Blanca Ovelar of the Colorado Party; and Lino Oviedo, who is backed by the National Union of Ethical Citizens.

Polls open at 7 a.m. ET and close at 4 p.m. ET with preliminary results expected later in the night. The new president will take office in August.

Lugo, a 56-year-old bearded ex-bishop, has led in past opinion polls. The Patriotic Alliance for Change, which is backing him, comprises center and center-left parties.

He held 36.8 percent support, compared with 26.4 percent for Ovelar and 24.3 percent for Oviedo, according to a poll published early this month in the Asuncion-based newspaper La Nacion.

As the election approaches, however, the media are not allowed to publish polls, and it was difficult to gauge if public opinion had shifted.

The election has only one round, and a majority is not needed to win.

Lugo has empasized the need for ending the Colorado Party's rule. "I believe that the politics of exclusion long practiced in this country doesn't have a future," Lugo has said.

He has also called for the renegotiation of Paraguay's hydroelectricity agreements with Brazil and Argentina, arguing that Paraguay, a landlocked country plagued by poverty, is losing money.

The 50-year-old Ovelar, a former education minister and mother of three children, has played up her opportunity of becoming the country's first female president.

"I want on the 20th of April ... that the news cross the world ... and that the news be ... that Paraguay has succeeded" in doing what Chile and Argentina already have, she has said, referring to the female presidencies there.

Oviedo is a former Army leader recently freed after spending years in prison for threatening a coup in 1996.

His party chose Oviedo, a former member of the Colorado Party, as its candidate in January.

Paraguay, a country of nearly 7 million people, is nestled between Argentina, Bolivia and Brazil. It is among the poorest countries in South America. E-mail to a friend