Not that Ortega guy again ...
Published July 28, 2006
Sixteen years and three elections ago, war-weary Nicaraguans ousted Sandinistan strongman Daniel Ortega from the presidency. He's been working on a comeback ever since. Now, with the untimely death of a former lieutenant and the largess of (who else?) Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, Ortega suddenly has a good shot at winning the Nov. 5 election.
Ortega, a former Marxist, came to power in 1979 after helping topple dictator Anastasio Somoza. He spent the 1980s battling the CIA-financed contra rebels in a civil war that left the country in ruin. Accused of corruption and sexual misconduct, he was knocked out of office in 1990. Still, Nicaragua has never been able to get on its feet.
It didn't help that voters in 1996 elected another scoundrel, conservative Arnoldo Aleman. He was convicted in 2003 of embezzling more than $100 million from the impoverished citizens of Nicaragua. Aleman, who is under house arrest, still controls the rightist Liberal Constitutional Party, which dominates the legislature; Ortega's leftist Sandinista Front controls the judiciary.
Under a bizarre left/right alliance dubbed "el pacto," the two former presidents operate as twin strongmen, having dismantled the checks and balances intended to protect the new democracy.
Hopeful signs emerged recently as both parties spawned splinter groups. Eduardo Montealegre, a Harvard-educated banker, left Aleman's camp and founded the center-right Nicaraguan Liberal Alliance Party. Herty Lewites, a former Sandinista guerrilla, Cabinet member and mayor of Managua, was expelled from the Sandinista Front and formed the center-left Sandinista Renovation Movement. Both launched campaigns for president, making the 2006 election an unprecedented four-way race. Even more encouraging, Lewites and Montealegre pledged that they would eliminate el pacto. Fresh air!
In late June, polls showed Ortega in first place, but far short of the 40 percent needed to avoid a runoff, which he likely would lose. Then on July 2, Lewites died of a heart attack. The question now is whether his followers, mostly disaffected Sandinistas, will return to Ortega's fold. If so, the divided conservatives could hand Ortega the election.
Meanwhile, Venezuela's Chavez has gifted Nicaraguan farmers with huge fertilizer subsidies billed as "foreign aid," but channeled through an agricultural cooperative with ties to Ortega. He also offered to send 10 million barrels of oil--on credit--to the energy-starved nation, where gas is $5 a gallon and power outages are a daily occurrence. That offer, too, was brokered through a Sandinista group, and so far the government has refused to let it materialize. Still, Ortega comes across as the good guy, trying to ease the burdens of ordinary Nicaraguans.
Grateful for cheap fertilizer and disgruntled about the stalled oil deal, Nicaraguans nonetheless think Chavez is meddling in their affairs. A poll last month in the political journal Confidencial found that 49 percent think Venezuela is interfering in the election.
U.S. officials, worried about Latin America's swing to the left, have openly criticized Ortega's "undemocratic tendencies" and suggested that his election could cause Nicaragua to lose aid and trade opportunities. Forty-six percent of Nicaraguans think the U.S. is meddling, too. They probably have a point. But it would be a lot easier to butt out if Nicaraguans had a track record of choosing good leaders.
Ortega's status as front-runner is a sign that the electorate has a short memory--and way too little experience with good government.
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