The World - News from Feb. 15, 1988

Paraguayan President Alfredo Stroessner was overwhelmingly elected to an eighth term in balloting marked by scattered violence between police, armed civilians and organizers of an election-day boycott. Stroessner, 75, who has retained his rank as army commander since a 1954 coup, faced only nominal opposition. With about two-thirds of the vote counted, Interior Minister Sabino Augusto Montanaro said Stroessner’s ruling Colorado Party had 968,253 votes, or nearly 90% of the total. An opposition coalition boycotted the vote, claiming the government used censorship, fraud and arbitrary arrest to stay in power.