Ortega near comeback in Nicaragua election

[Judi Lynn]

Ortega near comeback in Nicaragua election
Sun Nov 5, 2006 10:08am ET

By Catherine Bremer

MANAGUA, Nicaragua (Reuters) - Nicaraguans voted for a new president on Sunday with former Marxist guerrilla Daniel Ortega in with a strong chance of returning to power despite opposition from the United States, his Cold War enemy.

Sixteen years after he was thrown out of office by voters tired of a vicious civil war with U.S.-backed Contra rebels, the mustachioed Sandinista leader was ahead of conservative rivals in opinion polls in his third comeback attempt.

Although Ortega has toned down his leftist rhetoric since the 1980s, Washington worries he will team up with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and Cuban President Fidel Castro in the anti-U.S. bloc of Latin American leaders if he wins.

U.S. officials have warned that U.S. aid and investment could drop under a new Ortega government.
(snip/...)

http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=winterOlympics&storyID=2006-11-05T150756Z_01_N29310891_RTRUKOC_0_US-NICARAGUA-ELECTION.xml

[FlaGranny]

1. How not surprising that

"U.S. officials have warned that U.S. aid and investment could drop under a new Ortega government." In other words, don't vote for the government you really want (that's called democracy, I believe) or we'll punish you.

[razors edge]

2. Daddy bush must be livid,

His begotten is losing everything he worked so hard for.

[Rufus T. Firefly]

3. Poppy's thinking

"How many nuns & priests and impoverished people did we have to kill? We obviously didn't kill enough."

[xchrom]

6. you just hit the nail on the head.

the international corruption and murder of that time is the blueprint for the corruption and murder and mayhem of this time.

[ToolTex]

4. in 2001 their election law was changed so only 35 percent

were required to elect. Guess whether the CIA was involved in pushing that through. Do you think the Sandinista did that on their own. Also the old Contra leader has now joined Ortega as vice president candidate.

Damn Rove is good. War forever! Everywhere!

[kenny blankenship]

5. Are Americans a petty people who nurse grudges and keep grudges alive

decades after they should be passed on?

Didn't we do enough to Nicaragua during the 80s? Reagan lied and said Nicaragua was getting nuclear weapons (the MiG-23 nuclear bomb wing pylons canard). Reagan lied and said Nicaragua had invaded Honduras (an assertion immediately denied by Honduras). And when he wasn't spewing lies calculated to justify an invasion of Nicaragua (whoppers of prevarication that would make our George W. proud) he was strangling the country economically, by threatening other countries who wanted to trade with Nicaragua, and breaking our Constitution and running drugs to fund a terrorist campaign to destabilize Nicaragua, a long campaign of state-backed terror which caused a huge number of deaths there. The Sandinistas held elections as promised and on schedule anyway. The Sandinistas weren't saints but they clearly deserve the right to participate in Nicaragua's democracy. After all, we had helped to impose a kleptocratic dictatorship there for 60 years prior, and had the Sandinista Revolution not occurred we would surely be backing the Somoza dictatorship for another 60 years. Where do we get off criticizing how they implement land reform and democracy? It takes a lot of fucking nerve. Haven't we already done enough to Nicaragua for one millennium ?

[Robbien]

10. So true.

The best thing we can do for Nicaragua is back off. Let them decide their own fate. They certainly deserve to control their own destiny especially after all we put them through.

[Benhurst]

7. Whatever happened to Adolfo Colero? The U.S. killed thousands

of innocent people supporting that great populist leader (and head of Nicaragua's Coca-Cola plant) because he was so overwhelming popular, at least within Reagan/Bush crime family circles.

It's past time for the U.S. to just leave its bloody hands off Nicaragua and let THEM decide who they want for leaders. Oh, but wait, such decisions are supposed to be made by the Bush Crime Family and Diebold, like they are in the United States. I forgot.

[dipsydoodle]

8. Well if they do build a new canal

to supplement the Panama one I guess the Chinese will fall over themselves to help finance it if as threatened U.S. aid and investment dropped under a new Ortega government.

[Scurrilous]

9. Jimmy Carter in Nicaragua:

Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter (L) and Sandinista leader and presidential candidate Daniel Ortega (R) speak in a Managua hotel November 4, 2006. Carter is in Nicaragua to observe Sunday's general elections. Former Peruvian President Alejandro Toledo is seen in the centre.