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By PEDRO SERVIN and PETER ORSI, Associated Press ASUNCION, Paraguay (AP) Paraguay is poised to elect as its new president a conservative candidate from the party that backed strongman Alfredo Stroessner during 35 years of iron rule, returning the executive branch to the wealthy interests that have traditionally dominated this poor South American nation despite the election of a leftist ex-bishop in 2008. Sunday's vote is also an important milestone in Paraguay's attempt to regain the international acceptance it lost when neighboring nations objected to the fast-track removal of President Fernando Lugo. The expedited impeachment of Lugo last year conformed to Paraguay's constitution but was criticized by its neighbors as an "institutional coup" that threatened democracies around the region. Regional blocs such as Mercosur suspended Paraguay's membership following Lugo's ouster, but all signs indicate that Paraguay's neighbors will re-engage the country after the election to replace Federico Franco, who served out Lugo's term and is not eligible to seek a new one. Most polls indicate that tobacco magnate and soccer executive Horacio Cartes of the Colorado Party, which held power for 61 years before losing to Lugo at the polls, will win handily over his chief rival, Sen. Efrain Alegre of Franco's Liberal Party. A handful of candidates trail them, including Anibal Carrillo of the leftist Guasu Front coalition led by Lugo,toms shoes sale, who is seeking to return to politics as a senator. A presidential candidate can be declared winner with a plurality, and there is no runoff. Some likened the vote to the 2009 presidential election in Honduras that gave other nations reason to re-embrace the Central American country five months after President Manuel Zelaya was grabbed by soldiers while still in his pajamas and flown to Costa Rica. "The election in Honduras ultimately was important," said Gregory Weeks, a political scientist specializing in Latin America at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte,cheapest toms shoes. "It was contested and there might have been controversy, but what it did was it got the country sufficiently past the crisis to allow it to be accepted by all the rest of the region again." Whoever wins in Paraguay will have to deal with problems that have been endemic for decades in this landlocked nation of about 6.2 million people, most notably the yawning gulf between the haves and have-nots. Paraguay is South America's No. 3 producer of soy, corn and sunflower, but about 1 percent of the population controls 77 percent of the arable land. More than half of the people live in poverty, according to U.N. statistics. Paraguay's census bureau puts the poverty figure lower, at around 39 percent. Both leading candidate
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