Word: nicaragua
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After Chamorro's decisive showing, winning 55% of the vote to Ortega's 41%, claiming victory was the easy part. A harder question is whether the politically unseasoned Chamorro, 60, is prepared to guide bankrupt Nicaragua through the difficult transition from a revolutionary state to a functioning multiparty democracy. The answer will hinge largely on whether the Sandinistas live up to their promises to relinquish power peacefully after ten years of rule largely by proclamation, military muscle and caprice. Given Nicaragua's history of never managing a change of government without bloodshed, the odds seem stacked against Chamorro. Adding...
...first shock of the Sandinista defeat wore off, Nicaragua's fault lines reemerged. Within a day of the elections, scattered incidents of violence erupted in Managua and rural towns as Chamorro and Ortega supporters clashed. By Tuesday Ortega was sounding like his usual defiant self. At a public rally, he roared, "They want the government. We give it to them. We will rule from below." A peaceful transition, he cautioned, required the immediate demobilization of the contras. Warning that "the change of government by no means signifies the end of the revolution," Ortega was deliberately vague about the future role...
...unclear whether Ortega was merely posturing to placate his more hard- line followers -- or issuing an ultimatum. Chamorro did not wait to find out. She joined Ortega's call for the contras to lay down their weapons. "The causes of civil war in Nicaragua have disappeared," she said. The next day Ortega returned to a more conciliatory tone, this time announcing the renewal of a cease-fire that he had unilaterally suspended last November. At the same time, he called on the U.S. to pay for the prompt demobilization and relocation of the contras, 10,000 of whom remain...
...vote was an endorsement of her calls to abolish the military draft, establish peace and allow private enterprise to flourish -- the mainstay of her ill-conceived, disorganized campaign. It seems just as likely, however, that the vote was not so much for Chamorro as against the Sandinistas. Finding Nicaragua's economic and political conditions revolting, voters may simply have revolted with their ballots. If so, Chamorro may find her mandate slipping fast if she fails to move quickly on four fronts...
Conservatives and liberals in Washington are already arguing over who should claim credit for the Sandinistas' defeat. But nobody really "won" Nicaragua. If the election of Violeta Barrios de Chamorro as President last week reflected anything, it was the people's rejection of the pain they have endured for a decade. Give us a chance, they said. End the war. Save the economy. The immediate target of their wrath was the Sandinistas, but the U.S. too bears a share of responsibility. It now owes Nicaragua generous help if it wants democracy to flourish...