Nicaraguans reject Sandinista leaders
bid to retake power
By PAUL JEFFREY
Managua, Nicaragua
Ever since the U.S. Marines ran this country for three decades,
Nicaraguans have loved baseball and the specialized language of the sport. When
it finally became clear who had won the Nov. 4 presidential elections, the
commentary on the street about candidate Daniel Ortega, who had just lost his
third presidential election in a row, was, Se ponchó!
The once-mighty Ortega had struck out.
His opponent, Liberal Party candidate Enrique Bolaños, won
an estimated 55.8 percent of the vote to Ortegas 42. 8 percent.
Bolaños is a successful businessman who was an outspoken critic of
Sandinista policies during the 1980s. During the years the Sandinistas held
power, he was arrested and stripped of various properties and businesses.
Bolaños comfortable margin of victory was
unexpected, as was the transformation of Daniel Ortega during the campaign.
This wasnt the same candidate Ortega who, after winning a
1984 election, lost subsequent contests in 1990 and 1996. This time around
Ortega became a gentle flower child rather than a revolutionary who robbed
banks to finance the insurrection. The red and black banners of the Sandinista
Revolution that toppled dictator Anastasio Somoza in 1979 were replaced by soft
pastels and banners stating, Love will grow, Love is stronger
than hate, and With love we will build the promised land.
Yet the New Age mantras couldnt disguise Ortegas
obsession with returning to power. Ortega knew he couldnt make it there
alone, however, so he crafted the National Convergence, a coalition of 11
smaller parties that joined with the Sandinista National Liberation Front,
FSLN, to present a united alternative to the six years of cronyism and
corruption the country has suffered under President Arnoldo Aleman. Appearing
in pink shirts at campaign rallies, Ortega selected for his vice presidential
candidate a corruption fighter who had been jailed by both the Sandinistas and
by Aleman. Ortega brought former contra rebels and relatives of Somoza into the
fold and said hed appoint an evangelical pastor as head of the police and
security forces. The U.S. flag appeared at his campaign stops.
For months it seemed to be working, and polls showed Ortega
consistently ahead of Bolaños, who had been Alemans vice president
before he stepped down to campaign for president. Although seen as personally
honest, Bolaños did little to step out of Alemans shadow until the
waning days of the campaign. The difference between the two major candidates
was mostly style and background. Their platforms werent notably distinct.
Ortega offered a vision of national reconciliation and progress based on
bringing disparate political forces together under the umbrella of the
Convergence. Bolaños ran as Someone Other Than Ortega.
Under the terms of a 1999 pact between Ortega and Aleman, third
parties had a difficult time qualifying for the ballot. The Conservative Party
managed to squeak in, and for a while its candidate, Alberto Saborio, drew
enough votes from Bolaños to leave Ortega well ahead of his
opponents.
Effects of Sept. 11
And then came the Sept. 11 attack on the World Trade Center and
the Pentagon, which served Ortegas opponents -- including officials in
the U.S. State Department -- with the perfect campaign tactic: the
Osamafication of Ortega.
U.S. Ambassador Oliver Garza has worked behind the scenes for
months to sabotage Ortegas campaign and helped to pressure the
Conservative Party candidate to resign, leaving a weaker candidate at the head
of that partys ticket. This interference was relatively tame, given the
U.S. record in the region. The State Department refused in June to provide
covert funding for Bolaños campaign when former contra leader
Adolfo Calero took the Liberal Party candidate around Washington. (The U.S.
government did provide $6 million to help run the elections.)
Yet in the wake of the terrorist attacks in the United States, all
subtlety was lost. Garza appeared at a campaign rally with Bolaños and
warned about Ortegas links to international terrorists. Garza threatened
dire consequences for U.S.-Nicaraguan relations should Ortega win. Liberal
Party television spots showed Ortega with Palestinian Authority President
Yasser Arafat and Libyan leader Moammar al-Qaddafi. Jeb Bush, the brother of
President George W. Bush, wrote a Miami Herald opinion piece supporting
Bolaños. Liberals reprinted it in Managua papers under the headline
The brother of U.S. President George W. Bush supports Enrique
Bolaños.
It all amounted to electoral terrorism, according to
Miguel DEscoto, the Maryknoll priest who served as Ortegas foreign
minister in the 1980s. Even former president Jimmy Carter, in Managua to
monitor the elections, condemned the U.S. interference.
The U.S. government tried to intimidate and bully Nicaraguan
voters, said Jennifer DeLury, an activist here with Witness for Peace, a
church-sponsored solidarity group. The message was, Dont vote
for Daniel Ortega or youll suffer the consequences. Especially
coming from a government that waged a vicious war here, it was totally
inappropriate and no way to foster democracy.
Judging by the polls, the strategy worked. Bolaños ate away
at Ortegas lead and in the last week topped the pollsters
charts.
Depressed coffee prices, reduced orders for clothes from assembly
plants, and declining family remittances in the wake of Sept.11 will afflict
the Bolaños administration from the start. How much power Bolaños
will really have, with Aleman -- who gets a seat in the National Assembly as a
former president -- coordinating his handpicked slate of Liberal deputies,
remains to be seen. He may be overshadowed and outmaneuvered by Aleman, the
only politician in Nicaragua with a higher negative rating in the polls than
Ortega.
Ortegas old nemesis
In addition to opposition from the U.S. government, Ortega
suffered the naked hatred of his old nemesis, Cardinal Miguel Obando y Bravo,
the Roman Catholic archbishop of Managua.
Obando, who termed Ortega a snake at the close of the
1996 campaign, continued to get even with Ortega for the fierce church-state
tiffs of the 1980s. At a Mass three days before the balloting, with both Ortega
and Bolaños in attendance, the cardinal lambasted the former guerrilla
leader with an appeal to family values.
When we vote, we should ask ourselves whether the candidate
supports marriage, and a family based on marriage, instead of the tendency to
equalize true marriage with other forms of union, declared the
cardinal.
Ortega attended the Mass with Rosario Murillo, the woman with whom
he has lived for decades, though they are not officially married. Obando y
Bravo also reminded listeners that Ortega faces unresolved accusations of
sexual abuse from his stepdaughter, Zoilamerica Narvaez.
Ortega insists that Narvaezs charges are without merit, and
his most intimate associates, including Murillo and Fr. DEscoto, have
backed him up. Although Ortegas parliamentary immunity has prevented the
case from going to court, the scandal refuses to dissipate. In July it flared
up when Narvaez and DEscoto traded accusations in Confidencial, a
Managua weekly. Narvaez says DEscoto knew of the alleged abuse and told
her it was her Christian duty to tolerate it. DEscoto denies her
accusations.
Bishop Bosco Vivas accompanied Bolaños in his closing
campaign rally in the city of Leon. Amado Peña, a priest in Managua,
claimed Ortega would destroy the country as president.
Lots of people here have a simple faith and look to church
leaders like the cardinal to be their guides, said Miguel Vijil, a
Catholic activist who served as minister of housing in Ortegas government
in the 1980s. Unfortunately, the bishops are not thinking of the poor in
Nicaragua today, but rather still harping on their difficulties with the
Sandinista Front in the 1980s.
Several pollsters, including CID Gallup senior analyst Fred
Denton, claimed the negative campaigning against Ortega had a lot to do with
Bolaños last-minute ascent in the polls.
Yet Paul Schmitz, the Roman Catholic bishop of the Apostolic
Vicariate of Bluefields, told NCR that what he termed the U.S.
governments heavy-handed tactics and the aggressive
politicking by church leaders didnt have that much to do with how
the vote turned out. People voted from their experiences, and Daniel Ortega was
too old a face for them.
Gustavo Parajon, a Baptist pastor in Managua, also said the scare
tactics had little impact. Parajon has been mediating between the Aleman
government and a group of former contras who claim the government has failed to
keep its promises of land and housing to demobilized combatants. These
people are very angry and frustrated with the government, but they still voted
for Bolaños, Parajon said. The memories of the 80s
still have a lot to do with how people vote. The Sandinista Front still suffers
from the voto de castigo-- the punishment vote.
DeLury, who monitored the campaign throughout the country, said
the scare tactics used against Ortega had mixed results. It worked with
some people who were worried about the return of violence and hardship. Yet
others simply refused to be bullied by the Catholic church or the U.S.
government.
Whatever the reason for Ortegas lackluster showing, the
Sandinista leader conceded with just 5 percent of the vote counted. Vijil, who
years ago split from Ortega and helped form the Sandinista Renovation Movement,
gave the former president his due. Although hes obsessed with his
quest for power, hes committed to doing it democratically, Vijil
told NCR. More than any other elected politician weve had in
this country, Daniel has a democratic spirit at heart.
Although we Sandinistas dont want to lose, weve
grown accustomed to it, acknowledged Lidia Quezada, who runs a small
store in the front room of her adobe home in Ocotal. Weve just got
to keep on struggling.
The new president inherits a country that enjoyed considerable
economic growth in the 90s, but it was development that left the majority
poor even more marginalized. Although new malls and McDonalds restaurants
have sprung up in recent years, the 70 percent of the population living on less
than two dollars a day can only look and not buy.
Paul Jeffrey is a freelance writer living in Honduras.
National Catholic Reporter, November 16,
2001
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