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Losing Nicaragua, Again
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| Parent(s) |
Race
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| Contributor | RP |
| Last Edited | RP Oct 30, 2006 01:25pm |
| Logged |
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| Category | Commentary |
| Media | Newspaper - Washington Post |
| News Date | Monday, October 30, 2006 07:00:00 PM UTC0:0 |
| Description | The seemingly unavoidable outcome of next Sunday's election is a Nicaraguan tragedy, losing at the ballot box what was won two decades ago by the blood of contra fighters and the risking of Ronald Reagan's presidency. Because the anti-Sandinista vote is split, Ortega figures to return his Marxist-Leninist party -- now backed by Hugo Chávez's Venezuelan petrodollars -- to the presidential palace. Apart from the misery to be inflicted on the Nicaraguan people, this reflects the deterioration of U.S. influence in the Western Hemisphere under the Bush administration.
Nicaraguan law permits the election of a president with as little as 35 percent of the vote if he is five percentage points ahead of his nearest competitor. That now seems probable with the anti-Sandinista vote divided between two major candidates: former vice president Jose Rizo and banker Eduardo Montealegre. The former contras blame this state of affairs on the Bush administration in general and, specifically, on the U.S. ambassador in Managua, Paul Trivelli.
The looming political fiasco in Nicaragua comes as no surprise. Adolfo Calero, a Washington-based contra leader in the '80s, returned to the U.S. capital in April to issue a warning. He asserted that tacit U.S. support for Montealegre and opposition to Rizo was a horrendous political error and that the only hope to hold off the Sandinistas was to support Rizo. But official doors were closed to Calero.
North went public in his syndicated column of Oct. 6. He contended that "official U.S. policy in Nicaragua has been blind to the realities of Nicaraguan politics." He said Ambassador Trivelli "has to stop pressuring private sector leaders with potential reprisals" for backing Rizo and his Liberal Party. |
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