[Marxism] And It's Everyone Against Ortega

[Michael Hoover]

ELECTIONS-NICARAGUA:
And It's Everyone Against Daniel Ortega

José Adán Silva

MANAGUA, Oct 19 (IPS) - The possibility of a victory for the
Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) in Nicaragua's Nov. 5
elections has unleashed what is virtually an all-out political war
against its presidential candidate, Daniel Ortega.

Amidst accusations of foreign interference, the U.S. State Department
and the White House have thrown their support behind efforts by the
business community and politicians to unite rightwing parties into a
single electoral ticket in order to defeat the FSLN, historian Aldo
Díaz Lacayo told IPS.

"To the United States, the FSLN is still the main political and
organisational force with a real chance of winning the elections, and
that's a concern because it thinks Nicaragua would join the anti-U.S.
bloc led by Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, along with Cuba, Bolivia
and the other countries where the left is in power," he said.

Five political parties are fielding presidential candidates, who are
led in the polls by the leftwing FSLN, which governed the country from
1979 to 1990, after inflicting a military defeat on the dynastic
dictatorship of the Somoza family, the culmination of an armed
struggle that started in the 1960s.

According to opinion surveys, the FSLN candidate should win the
support of between 28 and 37 percent of the country's 3.4 million
voters.

Ortega would need just 35 percent of the vote and a five-point lead
over his nearest rival for a first-round victory.

The rightwing governing Constitutional Liberal Party (PLC) has
nominated lawyer José Rizo, under the influence of former president
Arnoldo Alemán (1997-2002), who was convicted of corruption. Rizo has
poll ratings of between 15 and 20 percent.

Another rightwing party, the Nicaraguan Liberal Alliance, led by
Harvard-educated banker and former government minister Eduardo
Montealegre, is attributed between 17 and 30 percent of voting
intention, depending on the survey.

Edmundo Jarquín of the Sandinista Renewal Movement, a dissident
faction of the FSLN, has 15 to 20 percent ratings.

Lastly, former guerrilla commander Edén Pastora, estranged from the
Sandinistas, is standing for Alternative for Change, and is predicted
to get no more than one percent of the vote.

Washington's concern has been reflected by statements against Ortega
and the FSLN by the U.S. Ambassador to Nicaragua, Paul Trivelli, and
other U.S. representatives, as well as by the attempts of several
Nicaraguan organisations to consolidate the rightwing vote against the
Sandinistas, Díaz Lacayo said.

"In a period of less than two months there were three known attempts
to unite both rightwing parties through the influence of people and
organisations openly backed by the United States," he said.

In mid-September, the American Chamber of Commerce in Nicaragua called
upon the parties to unite behind the candidate with the strongest poll
ratings, with the rest pulling out of the race.

This proposal failed. One day later, rightwing intellectuals and
leftwing dissidents associated in Unity for Nicaragua urged the
parties to set aside their ambitions and unite against Ortega.

In late September, U.S. Republican Congressman Dan Burton, chairman of
the House International Relations Subcommittee on the Western
Hemisphere, visited Nicaragua to press the same proposal.

Unless the other parties' candidates join together and support
Montealegre (Washington's favourite), Nicaraguans will suffer the
consequences of a Sandinista government and "difficult" relations with
the United States, as well as economic calamity, Burton hinted.

"These insistent urgings are polarising the elections," and their
effect is that "the non-Sandinistas lose out because people can spread
their votes in various directions, while the Sandinistas have only one
ticket," Díaz Lacayo said.

"The United States doesn't forget its enemies and it knows that this
Ortega, this FSLN, are the same ones who defied the U.S. in the 1980s
and committed a thousand crimes and abuses. That's why they want to
get rid of them by any means possible," presidential candidate Pastora
told IPS.

Ortega was a member of the Council (Junta) for National Reconstruction
which governed Nicaragua in the first half of the 1980s, and later
elected president (1985-1990).

In June he was accused of the massacre of indigenous people and the
forced displacement of thousands more in 1981-1982. This month the
case was taken before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights
(IACHR) by the non-governmental Nicaraguan Permanent Commission on
Human Rights.

But the IACHR already investigated the case back in 1982, and found
against the Nicaraguan state in 1984.

The media have reopened discussion, meanwhile, on another case against
Ortega, in which he was accused of sexual abuse and rape of his
step-daughter, Zoilamérica Narváez, beginning when she was 12 years
old.

The case has already been tried by the criminal justice system, and
the former president was acquitted by a judge who was a known
supporter of the Sandinistas. Subsequently Narváez brought legal
action against the Nicaraguan state before the IACHR on the grounds of
denial of justice, and obtained a favourable verdict in 2001.

IPS sought comments from the FSLN on these and other allegations for
more than two weeks, but only obtained one remark from a press aide:
"We will not respond to this hate campaign."

The legal representative of the FSLN, Elías Chévez, has reported the
International Republican Institute, an ultra-conservative U.S.
organisation, to the office of the public prosecutor for providing
thousands of dollars for training electoral delegates of the
Nicaraguan Liberal Alliance and the Sandinista Renewal Movement.

The FSLN's accusation was countered by another, from its opponents,
about Venezuelan funds and oil provided to the Sandinistas.

Sandinista city governments grouped in the Nicaraguan Association of
Municipalities signed an agreement in April with the Venezuelan state
oil company PDVSA to form the Alba Nicaraguan Oil Company. On Oct. 7
the first shipment of 304,000 litres of gasoil arrived and was met by
Ortega in person. Another shipment of 960,000 litres is on its way
from Venezuela.

The Sandinistas have also been accused of infiltrating the Supreme
Electoral Council with the purpose of fixing the elections in favour
of Ortega.

But the allegations of planned fraud are pure speculation, Roberto
Courtney, the head of the non-governmental Ethics and Transparency
Group, told IPS. There are more than 12,000 national and international
observers monitoring every step of the electoral process, and so far
they have not found any trace of irregularities, he said.

"This election is running more smoothly than previous ones," he said.
But he was concerned about interference from other countries,
especially in terms of campaign financing. "Injections of cash are the
worst kind of interference," he said.

"Under the present laws, there is practically no way of getting
political parties to account for their funds and donations. The fear
is that foreign governments and agents, and foreign companies, may
take a hand in financing the campaigns," Courtney said. (FIN/2006)