1989 Paraguayan general election

1989 Paraguayan general election

← 1988 1 May 1989 1991 →

Presidential election

Candidate Andrés Rodríguez Domingo Laíno Party Colorado PLRA Popular vote 882,957 241,829 Percentage 76.59% 20.98%

Results by department

President before election Andrés Rodríguez Colorado President-elect Andrés Rodríguez Colorado

Parliamentary election

All 72 seats in the Chamber of Deputies 37 seats needed for a majority

Party Leader Vote % Seats +/– Colorado Andrés Rodríguez 74.47 48 +8 PLRA Domingo Laíno 20.19 21 New PRF Fernando Sánchez 2.10 2 New Radical Liberal 1.32 1 −12 This lists parties that won seats. See the complete results below.

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Early general elections were held in Paraguay on 1 May 1989 to elect the president and Chamber of Deputies.^[1] They were the first held since longtime president Alfredo Stroessner was toppled in a military coup on 3 February, seven months after being sworn in for an eighth term. For the first time in several years, the opposition was allowed to contest the elections more or less unmolested; the Communists were the only party that was banned from taking part.^[2][3]

Andrés Rodríguez, who had led the coup and had been serving as provisional president since then, was elected president in his own right^[3][2] running on the Colorado Party ticket. The Colorado Party also won 48 of the 72 seats in the Chamber of Deputies. Voter turnout was 52%.

The legislative elections were called after Rodríguez dissolved the previous Congress in February, citing a provision of the constitution that allowed the president to do so if they felt Congress had acted in a manner that distorted the separation of powers. Rodríguez used the new elections as a tool to purge pro-Stroessner "militants" from the Colorado caucus. The presidential elections were held because the constitution required new elections if a president died, resigned, or was permanently disabled less than two years into their term. That same provision stipulated that the winner would not serve a full five-year term, but only the remainder of the previous president's term.^[3] In this case, Rodríguez won the right to serve the remainder of Stroessner's term, which was due to end in 1993.