Word: nicaragua
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...places on earth deserve a break more than Nicaragua does. For most of the last century, it was devastated by natural disasters like the massive 1972 Managua earthquake, brutalized by the Somoza family dictatorship and then betrayed by the venal incompetents of the Sandinista Front even as it was scarred by the U.S.-backed ontra war of the 1980s. But as the Western hemisphere's third poorest nation goes to the polls this Sunday to elect a new president, it looks set to prolong if not worsen its misery - thanks, in part, to Washington's failure to give Nicaragua...
...Improbable as it may seem, Ortega, now 60, has reemerged as the frontrunner in Nicaragua's presidential race through his alliance with an unlikely chum, former President Arnoldo Aleman. The corpulent Aleman would seem to be the skinny Ortega's antithesis - an arch-conservative Somoza acolyte elected President in 1996 in a wave of nostalgia for the pre-Sandinista days. But as President from 1997 to 2002, Aleman stole tens of millions of dollars from public coffers, including $1.8 million he charged on a government credit card for his wedding in Miami to a woman 22 years his junior. Aleman...
...Aleman's record didn't deter Ortega from cozying up to his erstwhile nemesis, and in 2000 the Sandinistas struck a cynical deal with the Liberal Constitutionalists to control Nicaragua's Congress (which this month passed a controversial total ban on abortion) and its courts, and to freeze out the country's more moderate parties. One key dividend for Ortega: In 2001 a Sandinista judge dismissed Narvaez's sexual abuse charges against Ortega, despite the fact that the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, an arm of the Organization of American States, has ruled that her case has merit...
...wider crackdown on corruption in Latin America. Ortega is also a friend of Bush's hemispheric archfoes, Cuba's communist leader Fidel Castro and Venezuela's radical leftist President Hugo Chavez. The Bush Administration, in fact, has warned that if Ortega wins it may cut U.S. aid to Nicaragua...
...Sandinista leader wins, Washington in many ways will simply be reaping the fruits of its own neglect. Nicaragua emerged from the contra war an economic basket case, and despite having played such a major role in fueling that conflict, the U.S. has not done enough to help the country back onto its feet. Nicaragua may simply be echoing the theme playing out all over Latin America right now, where U.S.-backed capitalist reforms have failed to reverse an epic gap between rich and poor, prompting voters to turn to leftists like Chavez. Seeing little to like in their immediate future...