AID grant no. LAG-0591-G-00-3014-00 to the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs for the program entitled `Paraguay : election monitoring"

NDI will send a pre-election monitoring mission to Paraguay in March to gather information on the election, encourage participation in the political process, and identify a feasible approach for an NDI-organized election delegation. Upon its arrival in Paraguay, the delegation will be divided into teams and deployed to various parts of the country to meet with political officials and party leaders before the elections to identify issues key to a comprehensive evaluation of the electoral process. On election day, the teams will observe the opening of the polls and travel to polling sites in their assigned regions to ascertain whether problems have occurred; to deter electoral fraud, they will remain in their assigned regions until a significant portion of the votes have been counted. A day or two after the election, the delegation will be debriefed and, based on its own observations and information it has received, prepare a consensus statement for release at a press conference.