Democracy? Sure, just as long as the right guy winsDiane Roberts, St. Petersburg Times, 12/2The Bush administration has been fond of proclaiming, "Democracy is on the march." And so it is. Not in Iraq or Afghanistan, alas. Democracy in those broken countries is on life-support. Other nations look more promising.
Take the United States. Democracy-deprived for the last six years - what with a neoimperial White House ignoring the parts of the Constitution Dick Cheney doesn't like - the midterm elections prove we haven't entirely lost our touch. And in Latin America, democracy isn't so much on the march as salsa dancing down the avenida.
Problem is, our government doesn't always like the fruits of all this democracy. Evo Morales, the new president of Bolivia, has nationalized his country's natural gas fields and plans to do the same with its mining industry. Michelle Bachelet, the new president of Chile, was tortured in the '70s by the Pinochet dictatorship the United States helped install. These leftists aren't the kind of corporation-loving banana republicans Washington prefers. Worst of all, Daniel Ortega, the Sandinista leader whose Marxist guerrilleros were, according to Ronald Reagan, "only two days' drive from Brownsville, Texas," has just become president of Nicaragua.
Naturally, we tried to stop his election. The U.S. ambassador in Managua openly supported Ortega's right-wing rival, ex-banker Eduardo Montealegre. Otto Reich, an adviser to George W. Bush (until he got caught egging on the 2004 Venezuelan coup-plotters, that is), also stumped for Montealegre. Other 1980s retreads, such as the felonious Oliver North, supported the even more reactionary Jose Rizo. North's endorsement did Rizo no favors. Neither did his association with former President Arnoldo Aleman, convicted of embezzling $100-million from the Nicaraguan treasury. Rizo came in third.
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