The Nicaraguan Presidential Election—Or, How Did it Ever Come to This?

The triumph of the Sandinistas will raise the morale of Latin America. Other countries will say—'look, that small country got away with it—so can we!' We will spread the revolution. There is an alternative to succumbing to the American Empire.
Daniel Ortega, 2006 Campaign Speech


How did it ever come to this?

The December 4, 2005 issue of The Panama News included my opinion piece titled “A Time to Step Aside.” In this article, I predicted that Daniel Ortega would not be reelected. I argued that the Nicaraguan people would never return the former Sandinista Comandante to power simply because he had run out of things to say. And as the quote that appears at the head of this entry indicates, Ortega’s political rhetoric still retains a Cold War tenor.

And yet polls suggest that on Sunday, November 5, Daniel Ortega may win the Nicaraguan presidency in the first electoral round.

How did it ever come to this?

The past few days I have been corresponding with Mr. Steve Kelley. He had read “A Time to Step Aside” and wrote to me wanting to know if I still maintained that Daniel Ortega couldn’t win. Steve’s an American expatriate and baby-boomer (which I am as well) who moved to Nicaragua six months ago to live and invest in the country. Today, understandably, he is quite nervous. Daniel Ortega’s record is bound to send shivers through the spines of foreign investors. If the former Comandante is reelected, they fear that Nicaragua will go the way of Venezuela and Bolivia, where the pulses of business owners beat erratically thanks to the populist policies of Hugo Chávez and Evo Morales.

How did it ever come to this?

Nicaraguans have their former president, Arnoldo Alemán—once a staunch US ally—to thank. His blatant corruption spoke louder than Ortega’s obsolete words, drowning out the former Comandante's aged discourse. What’s more, Alemán’s criminal acts said to the poor—and loudly—that Nicaragua’s upper class didn’t care about their plight. And then, in a desperate ploy to avoid a prison sentence, Alemán made this pact, among others, with Ortega: the percentage of votes necessary to win an election was lowered from 45% to 35%. The latest polls place Ortega at 33% of the intended vote. His closest challenger is Eduardo Montealegre, with 24%.

Not surprisingly, the Alemán-Ortega deal divided the opposition. Torn apart, as they currently are, neither candidate from the Liberal parties will win in the first round. Thus, Nicaragua stands at the brink of yet another political crisis: Ortega may get 35% of the vote and regain Nicaragua’s presidency after a sixteen year absence; and Alemán then will likely be pardoned.

Daniel Ortega is a relic of the 1980s—the bloodiest decade in Nicaragua’s history. As such, he belongs in the gloomiest of museums. And in ruthlessly holding on to the reins of the Sandinista party for the past three decades, he and his cronies have strangled the noblest ideals of Sandinismo. Moreover, as his campaign speeches show, he still has nothing new to say or to offer.

But, in reality, the political crossroad Nicaraguans currently face comes courtesy of Arnoldo Alemán and his greedy associates. The country’s bleak political scenario is lamentable because the good people of this nation, who have already suffered enough, deserve far better than to be trapped in the covetous, power-hungry grasps of two leaders with dismal records of failure.