Word: ortega
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...President-elect was called to the telephone in her elegant home Monday night just as the guard at the front door admitted a visitor. On the line was Ronald Reagan. In the foyer was Daniel Ortega Saavedra. Both wanted to congratulate Violeta Chamorro on her stunning upset, though clearly Reagan was the happier of the two. With the charm and diplomacy bred by her patrician upbringing, Chamorro told Reagan that she would have to call him back. Then she turned and embraced the Sandinista chief...
...widely pinned on Anastasio Somoza Debayle, ignited the popular outrage that a year later brought the Sandinistas to power. Exploiting Violeta's symbolic value as the widow of a martyr, the victorious rebels persuaded her to join a coalition junta. She accepted but soon fell out with Ortega and his fellow Marxists. Chamorro left the government in 1980 and became publisher of La Prensa. The job automatically made her the most prominent and vociferous enemy of the Sandinistas in the country...
When the hybrid National Opposition Union realized last year that to challenge Ortega it needed star quality on its presidential ticket, the magic Chamorro name was again decisive. Wary of wading back into politics, the silver-haired widow at first demurred, but she accepted the nomination at the urging of her husband's spirit, with whom she says she communes regularly...
...frightfully inept. Confronted with issues she had not mastered, she often berated her questioners or deferred to running mate Virgilio Godoy. By January she had learned to stick to prepared speeches and emphasize her personal appeal. Her radiant smile and motherly concern warmed Nicaraguans chilled by a decade of Ortega's martial scowls...
...military draft will be the first step. She must also rein in Godoy, whose statements during the campaign suggested that settling old scores might be the new government's top priority. At her first press conference, the President-elect made a point of fielding tough questions herself and praising Ortega for his concession of defeat...