Ortega front-runner in Nicaragua race

MANAGUA, Nicaragua – Sixteen years after his Sandinista revolution was defeated at the ballot box, Daniel Ortega is still trying to get his old job back. This time he even has a member of the Contras, once his worst enemy, as his running mate.

And after another trademark peace-and-love campaign featuring his former guerrillas in pink and John Lennon’s “Give Peace a Chance,” he may just win.

Since he was voted out in 1990, he has twice failed in similar campaigns to persuade Nicaraguans that his revolutionary past ended with the Cold War. Eager to move on from their civil war and fearful of a U.S. backlash, they chose less polarizing figures.

Now 61 and balding, Ortega is the front-runner in the Nov. 5 race, in part because so many have lined up to beat him.

Polls give him about 30 percent, leading a field of five candidates that includes two dissident Sandinistas tired of his repeated presidential campaigns.

Thanks to a constitutional change pushed by the Sandinistas in Congress six years ago, Ortega needs just 35 percent of the vote and a five-point lead over his nearest rival to avoid a runoff where he might face tougher odds. Previously, candidates needed 45 percent.

President Reagan branded Ortega’s 1980s government as a “totalitarian Marxist-Leninist dictatorship” that gave “the Soviet Union a beachhead on the mainland of this continent – only 2,000 miles from the Texas border, a clear national security threat.”

Even today, long after the collapse of the socialist bloc, U.S. officials warn that Ortega represents Nicaragua’s dark past, and that international aid could be denied to the second-poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere if he wins. U.S. Ambassador Paul Trivelli has called Ortega’s democratic credentials “very doubtful.”

Washington fears Ortega will team up with Hugo Chavez, its Latin American nemesis. The Venezuelan leader has openly backed Ortega, calling him a “brother” and sending low-cost fuel to ease Nicaragua’s constant power outages. Ortega personally attended the arrival of the first diesel shipment and considers Chavez his friend, while denying Chavez is meddling in the Nicaraguan election.

Ortega’s closest rival, the Harvard-educated banker Eduardo Montealegre, warns that Ortega will spread Chavez’s populist politics across the region and “put an end to the advances that democracy and foreign investment have achieved.”

If Ortega wins a five-year term, it will be the second great comeback this year for a Latin American radical-turned-moderate. Leftist Alan Garcia regained the presidency of Peru promising not to repeat the mistakes of his 1985-1990 presidency, which left his country mired in hyperinflation and guerrilla violence. Garcia’s opposition to Chavez earned him a White House visit this month and a promise from President Bush to safeguard a preferential trade deal.

Like Garcia, Ortega claims to be a new man who would maintain relations with Washington and negotiate with the International Monetary Fund he once accused of perpetrating “savage capitalism.” A Roman Catholic like 85 percent of his 5 million countrymen, he also says he now opposes abortion.

Ortega is doing all he can to convince Nicaraguans he poses no danger to the country, where American surfers and retirees are snapping up Pacific beachfront real estate.

His running mate, Jaime Morales, was the spokesman for the Contras when Washington organized and funded their civil war against the Sandinistas. Ortega even moved into Morales’ six-bedroom estate after the rebels overthrew dictator Anastasio Somoza and seized many properties.

Ortega recently made up for that past by paying Morales an undisclosed amount for the estate, and the former rivals’ smiling faces now blanket the capital, Managua, in pink-bordered signs promising reconciliation and unity.

“If we can govern in time of war, imagine what we can do in time of peace,” Ortega told a crowd in Managua.

But memories of war and hardship leave many unconvinced.

“Ortega is going to bring conflicts, blockades, hunger,” said Jose Castillo, 39, a martial arts instructor sitting at a new mall in Managua. “Nicaragua is already full of wounds.”

The Contra war killed about 50,000 people before it ended with Ortega agreeing to hold elections in 1990. He lost to U.S.-backed Violeta Chamorro, ending 11 years of Sandinista socialist rule, and has since lost two more elections.