Leftist Ortega poised for a return to power

[Scurrilous]

Polls show Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega in a position to win Nicaragua's presidency and return to the office he once took by force.

<snip>

"For 16 years, Daniel Ortega has been trying to regain at the ballot box what he once seized through a revolution -- the presidency of Nicaragua.
After toppling the Somoza family dictatorship in 1979 and leading the nation for more than a decade as the head of the Marxist Sandinista party, Ortega has lost the last three elections.

But now, a confluence of forces -- from a fractured opposition to the unexpected death of a chief rival -- seems to be giving the Reagan-era icon of the left a fighting chance of winning the Nov. 5 presidential race.

Sitting on the patio of the walled-off home that doubles as his campaign headquarters, Ortega, 60, does the political math: Twice during the past three elections, he has won more than 40 percent of the votes.

However, thanks to changes pushed through the National Assembly by his party in 2000, 40 percent -- and not a simple majority -- will be enough to avoid a runoff in this year's five-way race.

"I'm convinced we are going to win the first round," he told The Miami Herald, still sporting the black mustache he wore at age 33, when he led the Sandinista guerrillas to power. "I don't see any problem hitting that 40 percent mark again."

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/15153989.htm

[Bobbieo]

1. Very Interesting!!! What will George do?

Probably not much as he is up to his ass in alligators in the Middle East. If Ortega wins how many Marxists leader will there be south of the Mexican border?

[Yupster]

6. He won't be one of them

He's very changed from the Ortega of the 1970's.

His last election campaign he traveled the country apologizing for the excesses last time he was in power. He apologized especially to the Miskito Indians who he persecuted.

I think his daughter accusing him of molestation made him rethink things.

[struggle4progress]

8. I followed the Mískitu story very closely at the time. Here's ...

... a generally accurate summary:

... The first operation conceived by the architects of propaganda began on December 19, 1983. Instead of launching a new military initiative, the Miskitus who were allied with the Contras (and made up about half their total numbers) were able to convince the entire population of the Mískitu town of Francia Sirpe, over twelve hundred people, to flee to the Honduran side of the border. The Francia Sirpe "Christmas exodus" was a propaganda coup for the administration: Elie Wiesel, who would win the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986, trumpeted the "exodus" as analogous to the Jewish flight from Egypt. A filmmaker, Lee Shapiro, had accompanied the well-staged event, and his footage was all over the television news programs. (Shapiro was an official of Causa International, a part of Reverend Moon's Unification Church, which financed and distributed the film.) From the footage, Shapiro created a one-hour documentary, "Nicaragua Was Our Home," which was later broadcast on PBS.

In a short time, the State Department had produced a six-page internal draft paper to develop its official interpretation of the mass exodus. The classified document, dated February 1984, was titled "Nicaraguan Repression of Miskito Indians: The Christmas Exodus." Much of the wording in the classified internal paper later appeared as opinion columns and in newspaper articles in the months following the event. The draft paper makes clear that manipulation of refugees was the central strategy of the Reagan administration's attempts to discredit the Sandinistas: "Since the forced internal deportations began and other Sandinista violations of human rights intensified, thousands of Miskito Indians have sought a better way of life. They have 'voted with their feet,' with most of them going to Honduras." Regarding the staged "Christmas exodus," the draft paper tellingly states:

On December 19, 1983, the residents of the resettlement town of Francia Sirpe in northeastern Nicaragua attended Mass in a festive mood, knowing that plans had been made to depart to Honduras on the following day. According to the Indians, the Sandinistas were preparing to transplant the Indian population of Francia Sirpe to the mountainous region north of Managua.

The use of the term "resettlement town" to describe Francia Sirpe was telling, implying that it was one of the settlements created two years earlier by the Sandinistas to house the Miskitu refugees from the fighting on the border. But Francia Sirpe had not been created by the Sandinistas: It was built under the dictator Somoza, when he forcibly resettled Mískitus from north of the Rio Coco to the south of the new border in 1960. Before handing over the area to Honduras, Somoza had sent his National Guard into the disputed zone to force Mískitus south of the Río Coco -- after all, they were cheap labor in the mines. Francia Sirpe was in fact distant from the border, and the Sandinistas had no plans to relocate its population ...

http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/dunbarortiz121005.html

[SoCalDem]

2. Push-Pull all over the world.. and always and forever..

People who don;t have money and power gravitate towards the people (usually leftists) who promise to raise them up..and people who are rich and at least semi-powerful gravitate towards the status-quoers (usually 'conservatives')who promise to keep the little people "under control" so the richies can hold their wealth and power..

It was ever thus

[Selatius]

3. I wonder if he will open bridges with Hugo Chavez and Evo Morales???

They would be good allies to rely upon if Ortega feels the US will attempt to destroy Nicaragua again to rid it of a socialist tinge.

[mom cat]

4. And the revolution spreads and strengthens.

:toast:

[Peace Patriot]

5. Ortega was the mildest of revolutionaries. He seemed anxious for it to be

over and to re-establish civilian life and peace. (He has eight children, I understand--so he's a family man, in a big way.) Enter Reagan and the Contra death squads. Peace was not to be permitted.

I'm glad he survived it all, and it must give him joy and heart to see what's happening throughout Latin America now. As the newly elected, first indigenous president of Bolivia, Evo Morales, has said: "The time of the people has come."

As for Marxists, there is not a single Marxist leader anywhere in Latin America, except Cuba. All the new leaders are for mixed socialist/capitalist economies; all are peaceful; all are democratically elected. There have been no big land or property confiscations, other than unused, unhabitated land needed for agricultural self-sufficiency, and even that has been very limited. It's a new day. When Michele Batchelet--who was tortured by Pinochet--gets elected the first woman president of Chile, you know it's a new day. Something has happened--it almost seems like a miracle--but I imagine it's just the hard work of lot of good people. The tortured, the oppressed, the brown, the indigenous, the poor, are taking over peacefully, despite decades, centuries of the most brutal oppression. And I also imagine that Ortega has tempered his views. He has always seemed more of a socialist than a communist, and was probably just a communist because that was the thing, back then. It was anti-U.S. It was the Cold War. It was a hotheaded, young peoples' ideology (in the west). Also, the oppression in Latin America was of Tsarist proportions. A tiny, corrupt, rich elite owned all the land and everything of worth. Land HAD TO BE re-distributed. It was just common sense. It was mentioned in all sorts of programs, not just communist ones. I think RFK even said something about it.

What we're seeing is the Revolution without the bloodshed. Peace, justice, equity, common sense. And it is a beautiful thing to behold. It gives me hope for our own country, if we can ever restore democracy here.

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Bust the Machines--Vote Absentee!

[IndianaGreen]

7. Reagan is dead, and Ortega is rising from the political dead

Another nail in American imperialism and hegemony in Latin America, particularly now that the US is hell-bent in provoking a Middle East war.