Ortega's return

Daniel Ortega at a campaign rally. - YURI CORTEZ/AFP

Daniel Ortega makes a dramatic comeback as President of Nicaragua after 16 years.

THE victory of Daniel Ortega in the November 5 presidential election in Nicaragua signals the dramatic comeback of the Sandinistas after more than 16 years in the political wilderness. "The sovereignty of Nicaragua has triumphed," Ortega said after the Opposition conceded defeat, alluding to the role of the United States in the country's politics. He did not shy away from criticising the administration of President George W. Bush for its interventionist policies in West Asia and elsewhere.

Ortega said that Nicaragua would re-establish its close relations with Cuba and Venezuela and thanked all progressive leaders in Latin America for their support. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez had backed his "friend and brother" Ortega. The Venezuelan government has been supplying subsidised oil and fertilizers to municipalities controlled by the Sandinistas for some time now. Venezuela promised more help to the country if the Sandinistas were voted back into power. This offer convinced many Nicaraguans that U.S. sanctions would not work this time around.

At the same time, Ortega signalled that he would not institute radical economic reforms of the kind seen during the 1980s when Nicaragua had embraced socialism and was a close ally of the Soviet Union. He promised to respect the deals the previous right-wing governments had negotiated. Ortega also pledged to protect private enterprise provided it did not interfere with the interests of the poor. "We are showing the country that things are stable, that we can set aside our political positions and put first our commitment to pull Nicaragua out of poverty," he said in a brief post-victory speech.

Ortega offered an olive branch to the Bush administration by expressing his willingness to do business with Washington and let bygones be bygones. This assurance has not stopped the latter from worrying that Ortega would join the radical Latin American grouping consisting of Cuba, Venezuela and Bolivia. Washington so far has only extended a "cautious welcome" to the Sandinista victory. Initially, Bush administration officials had alleged "electoral malpractices" in the election.

Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, who was present in Nicaragua to monitor the election, concluded, however, that the election was fair and free. So did the other 17,000 observers.

The left-wing Sandinista Liberation Front Party (FSLN), under the leadership of Ortega, led a revolution in the small Central American country in 1979, overthrowing the corrupt, U.S.-backed dictatorship of the Anastasio Somoza. The revolutionary government was never allowed to settle down, with the U.S. sponsoring a brutal right-wing insurgency. Those were the days when the Cold War was its at height. Nicaragua was considered a particularly dangerous proxy state of the Soviet Union in the U.S.' backyard. The Ronald Reagan administration blockaded the country from the early 1980s and at the same time financed and armed a motley group of counter-revolutionaries and mercenaries, known as the "Contras". The Reagan administration secretly financed the Contra army by selling arms to the Islamic Republic of Iran through drug dealers and other shady middlemen. Many top Reagan administration officials were implicated in what came to be known as the "Iran-Contragate" scandal.

The Sandinistas put up a valiant struggle, but the U.S. succeeded in bleeding the country to submission. To end the bloodshed, the Sandinistas had to enter into a negotiated settlement with the Washington-backed counter-revolutionaries.

In the decade they were in power, they succeeded, in spite of the odds, in achieving many significant goals. Chief among them was an increase in the literacy rate and the introduction of land reforms. Nicaragua is among the poorest nations in Latin America.

Since 1990, the country has been ruled by a succession of right-wing parties - all having the patronage of Washington. Ortega, however, refused to fade away and continued to head the Left. He has been the main challenger to the right-wing candidates who have won elections since 1990. This is, in fact, the fourth consecutive time he has contested the presidential election. He won in 1985 but has been losing since 1990. In the last election he put up a tough fight. Blatant intervention by Washington in the electoral process deprived him of victory.

This time too, Washington tried to arm-twist the electorate. The U.S. Secretary of Commerce, Carlos Guiterres, warned that a victory for Ortega would have an adverse impact on Nicaragua. He went on record as saying that Nicaragua risked losing more than $220 million in aid and hundreds of millions more if voters made the wrong choice. Republican members of the U.S. Congress threatened to bring in legislation that would prevent Nicaraguans in the U.S. from sending remittances to relatives back home. One Congressman, Tom Tancredo, wrote a letter to the Nicaraguan Ambassador in Washington saying that "if the FSLN takes control of the government in Nicaragua, it may be necessary for the United States authorities to examine closely and possibly apply special controls to the flow of $850 million in remittances from the United States to Nicaragua - unfortunately to the detriment of many people living in Nicaragua."

Many Nicaraguans have vivid memories of the devastation that the Contras wrought on their country. In 1990, the administration of George Bush Sr. made it clear that if the Sandinistas were re-elected the sanctions and the blockade of Nicaraguan ports would continue. (The International Court of Justice at The Hague condemned the U.S. government for mining Nicaraguan ports.)

During the course of this election, the U.S. Ambassador to Nicaragua, Paul Trivelli, threatened economic reprisals from Washington if Ortega was voted to power. The U.S. President's brother, Jeb Bush, Governor of Florida, was a full-time Contra backer. He continues to have strong links with right-wing groups in Nicaragua. Oliver North, who was one of the key players in the Iran-Contragate scandal, was sent to Nicaragua to help in the campaign against the Sandinistas.

The Bush administration, despite trying its utmost, was unable to cobble up a united opposition to field a single candidate against Ortega. Eventually, it threw its weight behind Eduardo Montealegre of the newly formed Nicaraguan Liberal Alliance. On the campaign trail, he never failed to advertise his close links with Washington. He constantly reminded the electorate of the "misery, death and the pain" of the 1980s - the period when the Sandinistas were in power. The electorate had, however, not forgotten who were the guilty parties responsible for the carnage and destabilisation of those days. Ortega characterised Bush as the "Reagan of these times".

There was also a candidate from a splinter group of the Sandinistas - the Sandinista Renewal Movement (MRS) - running for President. The MRS was led by the late Herty Lewites, a former associate of Ortega. The other prominent ex-Sandinista members of the party are the liberation theologist and poet Ernesto Cardenal, Ortega's former Vice-President Sergio Ramirez, and the novelist Giocondo Rivelli. Lewites was expelled from the FSLN in March 2005 after he mounted a leadership challenge to Ortega.

Lewites, known for administrative abilities and incorruptibility, was attracting more than 15 per cent of the votes in the opinion polls when a heart attack felled him on July 2. With his death, the challenge from the group fizzled out.

Ortega, on the campaign trail, turned out to be a consummate politician. Though he still professes left-wing views, he has also embraced religion and the market. He counts Fidel Castro and Chavez as among his close friends, but at the same time he has dropped his objections to the Central American Free Trade Agreement. The Cuban and Venezuelan governments vehemently oppose this grouping.

It was a new Ortega on view, not the leader whose revolutionary rhetoric used to send various U.S. administrations into convulsions. Ortega says that his two role models are the Nicaraguan patriot Augusto Cesar Sandino and Jesus Christ. Nicaragua, despite its revolutionary traditions, is a deeply religious country, with more than 60 per cent of the population being devoutly Catholic. Ortega supported a Bill banning all abortions. This brought him closer to the Catholic Church. His running mate was a former enemy, the Contra leader Jaime Morales.

In 1999, Ortega signed a pact with the then President, Arnoldo Aleman, currently under house arrest for corruption. The pact involved a division of power between the right-wing Constitutional Liberal Party and the Sandinistas. At that time, the two parties controlled 90 per cent of the seats in the National Assembly. They used their powers of patronage to put their supporters in key positions in the judiciary and other organs of government. Both the leaders gave themselves parliamentary immunity: Aleman from corruption charges and Ortega for alleged moral turpitude. Ortega's stepdaughter had accused him of sexually abusing her. Her charges were never proved. Aleman has recently been stripped of his immunity after having been found guilty of embezzling more than $100 million from the exchequer.

This power-sharing deal known as "el Pacto", considered opportunistic by many Nicaraguans, led to a split in the FSLN and desertions from Aleman's party. After the pact, the electoral law was changed. The percentage necessary for winning the presidency in the first round of the election was lowered to 35 per cent. In elections since 1990, the Sandinistas regularly attracted between 35 and 40 per cent of the popular vote. Until this election, a candidate had to win 40 per cent or more to win the presidency in the first round. With Opposition votes going to a single candidate, Ortega ended up as a narrow loser in the second round in the three previous elections.

The victory of the Sandinistas is yet another illustration of the growing influence of progressive forces in Latin America. It also shows that the electorate in the continent can no longer be cowed down by threats from Washington. The U.S. invasion of Panama in 1989 to overthrow the government of Manuel Noriega did have an impact on neighbouring Nicaragua. Nicaraguans thought that fire and brimstone from Washington awaited them if they again voted the Sandinistas into power. That fear is no longer evident.

Nicaragua under the Sandinistas will no longer be isolated. It has the solidarity of the left-wing governments that have struck root in the region. More left-wing governments are likely to be voted into power in Latin America in the not-too-distant future. The people are fed up with being dictated to by Washington and being forced to implement neoliberal economic policies.