Word: ortega
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...world breathed a sigh of relief when Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega and President-Elect Violeta Chamorro embraced last Monday. Nicaragua's freest and fairest election ever seemed to go off smoothly, indicating that world leaders may soon be free of any entanglement with the country's civil war. President Bush even congratulated Ortega last week on "the conduct of the election and on his pledge to stand by the results...
...ORTEGA'S meeting with Chamorro was a good public relations stunt, an ostensible sign of national reconciliation. But it could not obscure the Sandinistas' prior contempt for the opposition and reluctance to listen to popular sentiment...
...Sandinistas marshalled all the resources of the government to further their political ambitions. (In the U.S., government resources cannot be used for partisan campaigns.) Ortega used army trucks to transport people to pro-government rallies, and government workers painted campaign signs and distributed campaign literature, according to the Organization of American States (OAS). State television and radio broadcast anti-UNO propaganda regularly...
...Jimmy Carter's monitoring organization said in late January that 300 UNO poll-watchers had been intimidated into resigning. Similarly, more than 100 opposition candidates had resigned by mid-December because of Sandinista intimidation, the OAS reported. The military played a part in intimidation too, as defense minister Humberto Ortega stated his intention to "neutralize" those "encouraging the Yankee invasion" of Panama, a reference...
Those Americans who backed the Sandinista regime found it difficult to fathom Ortega's loss. Up to the time of the vote these supporters ignored the facts and glorified the party's egalitarian theories. If they had seen how the Nicaraguan government gradually lost touch with those it originally represented, perhaps they would have foreseen Chamorro's victory...