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A REGIONAL TURNING POINT; ORTEGA WINS PRESIDENCY IN NICARAGUA.

Article Excerpt
Daniel Ortega had the presidential elections won with an irreversible lead after a power outage stopped the counting Nov. 6, with 61% of the votes counted. But the losers would not give up, the Consejo Supremo Electoral (CSE) would not declare a winner, and Ortega would not claim victory until about 91% of the votes were tallied the evening of Nov. 7. It was a hard-won battle for the Frente Sandinista para la Liberacion Nacional (FSLN) standard-bearer; this was his fourth attempt to reclaim a presidency he lost in 1990. Ortega was first elected in 1984 following the successful Sandinista Revolution that toppled the dictator Anastasio Somoza (1963-1979) in 1979. This term will last five years.

Internationally, the election was seen as the latest battle in the proxy war between the US and Venezuela. As such, it was a clear loss for the US both because of the clumsiness of its interventions and because of the deftness with which Ortega played the overt interference by US congresspeople, the State Department, US Ambassador to Nicaragua Paul Trivelli, Secretary of Commerce Carlos Gutierrez, and even Oliver North.

These US operatives and others mounted an unprecedented campaign of intimidation of the Nicaraguan electorate. The ambassador and a succession of Republican US congresspeople threatened aid cutoffs, reductions in oOUS and other foreign investment, and legislation to impede the flow of remittances from Nicaraguans working in the US to their families.

The intensity of Washington's campaign drew criticisms around the world and appeals to halt the interference from the Organization of American States (OAS) and from the UN, but the politically tone-deaf administration of President George W. Bush seemed incapable of controlling its excesses. As early as July, Michael Shifter, Nicaragua expert at the Washington-based Inter-American Dialogue, cautioned, "An Ortega win at the ballot box in November would be a humiliating setback for the Bush administration. Unlike in other Latin American elections, where Washington has shown admirable neutrality, in Nicaragua it has not concealed its intense desire to keep Ortega from returning to power."

Ortega played on his electorate's long memory of US...

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