## Ortega headed for stunning victory in Nicaragua

By Letta Tayler
Newsday Latin America Correspondent
November 6, 2006, 1:46 PM EST
Managua, Nicaragua -- In a stunning comeback, former Marxist revolutionary Daniel Ortega appeared headed to irreversible victory in Nicaragua's presidential elections despite heated U.S. efforts to thwart his win.
Fireworks punctuated the sky and thousands of supporters whizzed through Managua's streets in pickup trucks and motorcycles shouting "Love live El Comandante!" after results were announced after midnight.
Fans waved a sea of Sandista flags _ some in the traditional red-and-black stripes of Ortega's 1979 revolution that toppled the corrupt Somoza dynasty, others in pink, the campaign color he adopted to show he'd softened his Cold War ideology.
"It is God's miracle. Our savior has returned," said Fernanda López, 76, tears of joy streaming down her face.
Loudspeakers in Sandinista neighborhoods blasted Ortega's campaign song, a Spanish-language version of John Lennon's "Give Peace a Chance."
With 40 percent of votes counted, the balding, mustachioed leftist, whose regime battled U.S.-backed troops in the 1980s, captured 40.1 percent of the vote in the five-way race. That was well over the 35 percent, with a 5-percent lead over his closest runner-up, that he needed to win on the first round.
Though Bush administration officials had warned they might yank millions of dollars in vital aid if Ortega won, U.S.-backed candidate Eduardo Montealegre, a conservative, Harvard-educated banker, only garnered 32.7 percent of ballots.
It was Ortega's third consecutive reelection attempt since he was voted out of the presidency in 1990.
Montealgre said he would not concede defeat until the Supreme Electoral Council issued a formal tally. "This is a battle to transform Nicaragua and it's not over until the last vote is counted," he said yesterday morning.
And a U.S. Embassy statement said it was too soon to "make an overall judgment on the fairness and transparency of the process." But initial reports from international observers including the Carter Institute of former President Jimmy Carter and the Organization of American states pronounced the vote largely clean. Two quick counts from respected Nicaraguan groups also upheld Ortega's victory.
The vote "was peaceful, massive, orderly and conducted according to the law," said Gustavo Fernando, the OAS chief of mission.
During his first presidency, Ortega became a symbol of U.S. fears that a communist wildfire could sweep the Americas in the 1980s. Then-President Ronald Reagan declared that Nicaragua could become "a launching pad for revolutions … just two days' driving time from Harlingen, Texas," and began funding rightist Contras battling Ortega's Sandinistas in a war that left 30,000 dead. Secret U.S. funding of the Contras through illegal arms sales to Iran blew into the Iran-Contra scandal.
As the seventh leftist leader to win office in recent years in a Latin America increasingly at odd with U.S. dictates, Ortega's victory represents both a symbolic and a strategic blow to President George W. Bush.
Many political analysts called it a self-inflicted wound, saying United States made the Cold War dinosaur who will lead this desperately poor, banana-exporting, New York-sized nation of 5.5 million into a far more important figure that he is.
Ortega, 60, has softened over the years, publicly preaching God and peace instead of Marx and God, and saying he wants free trade with the United States. But U.S. officials fear he will increase his friendship with Cuba's Fidel Castro and Venezuela's leftist leader Hugo Chávez, who is trying to use his nation's oil wealth to expand an anti-U.S. coalition around the world.
Chávez is widely believed to have financed Ortega's campaign and also has launched several programs for impoverished Nicaraguans in recent months. The OAS and the Carter Center chastised both Venezuela and the United States for election meddling.
Political analysts described Ortega's victory as a needed feather in the cap of Chávez, whose regional influence appears to have leveled or ebbed since he called Bush "the devil" on the floor of the United Nations in September.
But most Nicaragua experts believed that by forging close ties with Ortega, the United States could ensure he steers a moderate course.
Ortega, who remained one of the country's most powerful politicians after leaving office, has actually lost support over the years, particularly after striking a power-sharing pact in 1999 with former conservative President Arnoldo Alemán, currently under house arrest for embezzling millions of dollars from the government.
He won through the new law he engineered with Alemán that lowered the percentage of votes he needed to win on the first round from 45 percent to 35 percent, combined with a rightwing that was divided for the first time between two candidates. In addition, with Nicaraguans able to vote at 16, he gained backing from a new generation of voters frustrated with the country's lack of jobs and prospects who were too young to remember the hardships of his first presidency.
Those who did remember the food lines, mandatory draft and crackdowns on political foes were reeling from Ortega's win.
"Ortega is now preaching love and love is super important," said Thelma de Quadra, a housewife in pearls and linens in affluent Las Colinas, a neighborhood of manicured lawns and elegant homes cloistered behind high walls. "But after all that hate, it's too late."
The race featured colorful _ and, to some, chilling _ appearances from many past players in Nicaragua's civil war. Oliver North, the former White House aide who orchestrated the Iran-Contra scandal, came down to Nicargua to cavort with old Contra pals and compare Ortega to Hitler.
Former President Jimmy Carter, whose presidency was marred by his acceptance of the Sandinistas during his final weeks in office, was here to help monitor the vote. "It's like old times," a thinner, grayer Carter said wryly as he shook hands with a portlier, balding Ortega.
Also featured were presidential candidate Edén Pastora, the famed "Commander Zero" who switched from Sandinista to Contra in the 1980s, and protest singer Carlos Mejía Godoy, a vice-presidential candidate for a breakaway Sandinista party, who penned the original Sandinista anthem that goes, "Let's fight the Yankee/enemy of humanity."
Ortega leading in Nicaragua vote Ortega Wins Nicaraguan Election