“Business – the banks and the rest – must realise that poverty is not a good ally to have,” says Fernando Armindo Lugo, president-elect of Paraguay, where half the population lives in poverty or extreme poverty, according to the UN. “When you live together, poverty is a threat. Richer people now have to work with the rest to defeat poverty, to take their part in the slow and, at times, painful process of eradicating poverty. In the end, we will all be better off”.
Mr Lugo won a striking victory in April’s presidential elections. With 42% of the votes, he defeated the candidate of one of the traditional political parties, the Colorados (or Reds), which has been in uninterrupted power for the past 61 years but only won 32% of the votes. To do that, he had to lay down his responsibilities as the bishop of the unprepossessing diocese of San Pedro.
