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MANAGUA, Nicaragua, Nov 6 (Reuters) - Former Marxist revolutionary and U.S. Cold War enemy Daniel Ortega headed back toward power on Monday in Nicaragua's presidential election 16 years after voters threw him out to end a war against U.S.-trained rebels.

With returns in from 40 percent of polling stations in Sunday's election, the 60-year-old Ortega had just above the 40 percent of votes that would seal a first-round win.

Two quick counts by respected observer groups also gave Ortega a big enough lead to win without facing a runoff.

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[ 06 November 2006: Message edited by: sgm ]

[ 06 November 2006: Message edited by: sgm ]

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Originally posted by Ken Burch:
I hope the Sandinista Renovation Movement(MRS)will have a strong presence in the new congress. They are a progressive reform faction that will fight to hold Ortega to truer and more humane Sandinista values.

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Mr Ortega needs to win 40% of votes, or 35% and a five-point margin, to win outright and avoid a second round.

Mr Ortega has seen 16 years of conservative governments and says he wants an end to "savage capitalism".

But he says his revolutionary days are behind him - and his main priority is to secure foreign investment to help to ease widespread poverty.

Mr Ortega has been endorsed by left-wing Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.

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[ 07 November 2006: Message edited by: Wilf Day ]

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The result of Nicaragua’s crooked transition from Sandinista dictatorship to democracy can be gauged on many levels. According to a study by investigative reporter Jorge Loaisiga, the government over the last 15 years has spent $1.104 billion in compensation bonds paid to various types of claimants and another $500 million setting up bureaucratic structures to deal with the labyrinthine property rights disputes arising from the Sandinista land confiscations. In the absence of legal safeguards and enforceable property rights, the economy has been extremely weak. Nicaragua exports barely $800 million a year and is the poorest nation in the hemisphere after Haiti.

The political consequences of the failed transition were seen on Election Day Sunday. Because the pact lowered the bar for a first-round victory in the elections, Ortega, one of the major culprits of Nicaragua’s plight, needed only 35 percent of the vote, and a five-point lead over the runner-up in order to avoid a runoff. So, with 39 percent of the vote and with two-thirds of Nicaraguans dead set against him, Ortega is now almost certainly the president-elect although a few votes still need to be counted before his victory can be formally announced.

The best hope for a different outcome was with the center-right Nicaraguan Liberal Alliance, led by former Foreign Minister Eduardo Montealegre, and the centrist Sandinista Renovation Movement, which broke ranks with the Sandinistas a few years ago and whose candidate, Edmundo Jarquin, shared many values with Montealegre. But the center-right vote was split between Montealegre and Aleman’s PLC party, while Jarquin actually took more votes away from Montealegre than from Ortega.

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Link.

The Sandinistas weren't perfect, to be sure, but Vargas Llosa's refusal to deal seriously in this column with the failure of more than a decade's worth of neo-liberal economics says a lot, in my view.

[ 09 November 2006: Message edited by: sgm ]

The Alianza Liberal Nicaragüense (ALN) will have 27 legislators, and the Partido Liberal Constitucionalista (PLC) 22.

He argued that elections would necessarily be a vehicle for American-based interests to swamp Nicaraguan autonomy, and when the Sandinistas lost in 1990, the Cubans basically said "I told you so."

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Originally posted by jeff house:

He argued that elections would necessarily be a vehicle for American-based interests to swamp Nicaraguan autonomy, and when the Sandinistas lost in 1990, the Cubans basically said "I told you so."

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And it only took 16 years for Nicaragua to get this far, Jeff. We sincerely hope that Nicaraguan's are able to achieve the same levels of literacy and infant mortality that existed in Cuba a good many years ago. Nicaragua will require sustained effort in repairing the damage done by corruption associated with neo-Liberalism in that country.

For sixteen years, Nicaraguans would have suffered under an attitude which claims to know best for the people what the people should want.

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jrootham: Establishing their democratic bona fides makes it more difficult for the U.S. to launch a military attack on them.

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Fascism hides behind a mask of democracy until it's existence is threatened by democracy, at which time the mask comes off.

The cold war is just the colder war now. U.S. military budgets are still the highest in the world and running up the largest national debts in world history. Donald Rumsfeld announced increased aid for Latin America's militaries severl months ago. The faces change but not the agenda.

Leftist rebels are still fighting U.S.-backed fascist regimes from Burma to Colombia. Fascists aid and abet Chechen "rebels" and mercenaries from around Asia and Europe. Does anyone believe Hamid Karzai is a democratically-elected leader ?.

[ 09 November 2006: Message edited by: Fidel ]

Destroying an entire generation of Nicaraguans for the sake of "democratic legitmicay" is no small price.

I hope Ortega remembers who his true friends are and rejects the IMF formula that has destroyed the country. If the Sandinistas can re-create the education and health programmes from their previous rule, neo-liberalism will be dealt another blow.

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Many observers from the national and international left have noted that there was really no "left" option in the Nicaraguan elections. This is a valid appreciation if "left" is taken to mean pro-socialist. However, the combined FSLN-MRS vote indicates that a significant 44% of the population continue to identify with the heritage of the Sandinista revolution and used the elections to express defiance of imperialist arrogance and power. Even PLC voters expressed indignation over U.S. attempts to sideline their party.

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The FSLN’s Evolution Since 1990:From Revolutionary to National Bourgeois Party

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The Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) is not the same party that led the Sandinista revolution to victory in 1979 and then formed a revolutionary anti-imperialist government based on mobilized workers and farmers. It is not even the same party that lost the elections in 1990 to the National Opposition Union (UNO), a pro-U.S. coalition led by Violeta Chamorro and the Managua daily La Prensa.

The intractable problems inflicted by the long U.S.-sponsored Contra war compounded by the 1990 electoral defeat brought about a political and ideological implosion of the FSLN’s national leadership. Many leaders concluded that the whole revolutionary project had been misconceived. Given the collapse of the Stalinist regimes in Eastern Europe and of the Soviet Union itself, most of this leadership now believed that socialism was no longer a viable option for Latin America, at least for many decades.

In tandem with this ideological collapse, many were seduced to buy into the new order. A range of Sandinista leaders and associates participated in a privatization process of state and FSLN property. They emerged as a new sector of the Nicaraguan capitalist class, the so-called Sandinista bourgeoisie.

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"I'm glad Reagan didn't live to see this. No, wait. I'm just glad he's dead."

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