Word: ortega
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...moment later, former U.S. President Jimmy Carter arrived with word that President Daniel Ortega Saavedra was willing to concede defeat. Was Dona Violeta prepared to claim victory? "Si," quickly answered Virgilio Godoy, her assertive running mate. For an embarrassing moment, Chamorro stared at Godoy. Then she replied, "I am ready...
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...
Wisely, Chamorro's first impulse was to strike a note of reconciliation. "There were no winners or losers in these elections," she told Ortega when the two met at her home the evening after the vote. Chamorro pressed a similar message in her victory speech. "This is an election that will never have exiles or political prisoners or confiscations," she said. Initially Ortega added to the aura of reconciliation with a graciousness that impressed even his harshest critics. In his concession statement, he hailed the "clean and pure electoral process" and pledged to "respect and obey the popular mandate...
...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...
This oppression could have stemmed from the presence of Ortega's military of 150,000 soldiers, supposedly formed to combat the 15,000-strong Contra resistance. Ortega also used the war against the Contras to excuse censoring La Prensa, harassing non-Sandinista priests and bishops and dislocating an indigent tribe from its ancestral homeland...