Nicararagua y la revision del pasado en las urnas

Ortega dio el batacazo en primera vuelta

Escrutado más del 60 por ciento de los votos, Daniel Ortega obtenía 38 por ciento frente al candidato liberal, Eduardo Montealegre (30 por ciento), y se evitaba el ballottage. El tercer candidato, José Rizo, y la Embajada de Estados Unidos cuestionaron la elección.

http://www.pagina12.com.ar/diario/elmundo/4-75792-2006-11-07.html

Leftist Headed Toward Victory in Nicaragua

MANAGUA, Nicaragua, Nov. 6 — Sixteen years after he left power, Daniel Ortega, a former Marxist president and the Sandinista leader who is still regarded as a sworn foe by many in Washington, appeared headed to a victory on Monday in the Nicaraguan presidential election.

Though electoral officials had yet to release final tallies from Sunday’s vote, preliminary results and the country’s electoral watchdog groups all indicated that Mr. Ortega, who had failed three times before to gain the presidency in elections, would win a clear victory.

An Ortega win in a five-way race would be a defeat for the Bush administration, which strongly opposed his election and worked hard to unite a fractious opposition against him with little success. The White House has said it would withdraw aid from an Ortega government.

With about 61 percent of the vote counted, Mr. Ortega had 38.6 percent of the ballots, about 8 points ahead of the second-place candidate, Eduardo Montealegre, a Harvard-educated financier and conservative Washington has openly supported. Final results were not expected until Tuesday, an election official said.

Now 60 years old and balding, Mr. Ortega has maintained he is no longer a Marxist, but more of a pragmatist. He has promised to keep good relations with the United States and chose a former political opponent as his running mate. He has also vowed to help the poor and run a positive campaign around the themes of “peace, love and unity.”

But he maintains close ties to Cuba and to Hugo Chávez of Venezuela, the leftist president who has become a thorn in the side of the United States. Mr. Chávez gave the Ortega campaign significant support by sending subsidized oil to Nicaragua and distributing it through Sandinista politicians.

Mr. Ortega’s expected victory appeared to be another gain for leftists in Latin America, who, despite recent setbacks in Peru and Mexico, have also persuaded voters to abandon conservative governments in Brazil, Argentina, Chile and Bolivia.

Although the results were preliminary, supporters of the Sandinista National Liberation Front party of Mr. Ortega set off fireworks around the city on Monday, and drove around honking horns, shouting victory slogans and waving red and black Sandinista flags. Mr. Ortega had yet to make a statement.

Cuba immediately congratulated Mr. Ortega. “This is good for the people of Nicaragua and for the integration of Latin America,” Foreign Minister Felipe Pérez Roque told The Associated Press on Monday.

Mr. Ortega’s opponents refused to recognize his expected victory until all the votes were counted. The United States took a similar stance. The State Department’s deputy spokesman, Tom Casey, said Monday that the administration would wait to comment until the Nicaraguan electoral council announced who won. He also said it was too early to comment on procedural problems during the voting, noting that several groups of observers planned to file reports.

Mr. Casey said the United States delegation in Nicaragua had remarked on “high turnout and given praise to the Nicaraguan people for their patience and their willingness to show support for this democratic process.”

Mr. Ortega was one of the leaders of the Sandinista rebels that swept to power in 1979, toppling the Somoza dynasty of right-wing dictators friendly to the United States and setting up an authoritarian left-wing government.

With the cold war still driving United States policy, President Reagan imposed sanctions on the country and financed anti-Sandinista guerrillas, known as contras, in part by secretly selling arms to the revolutionary Islamic government in Iran. It was Mr. Ortega who led his Soviet-backed government in a bloody decade-long civil war.

The last time Mr. Ortega ran Nicaragua, he seized private assets and redistributed land to peasants. Capital fled the country, along with many of its business leaders. He vows a different approach this time.

The advertising campaign against the former rebel leader was vicious, showing images from the civil war, women weeping, guns blaring. His opponents lost no chance to remind people of the economic collapse that followed the fighting and the United States embargo.

Mr. Ortega was elected president in 1984 and served from 1985 to 1990, before losing to Violeta Chamorro. He struggled to regain power through the ballot box, but without success, in 1996 and 2001.

posted by Juan @ 9:36 AM