| Author: | Stephanie Hanson |
|---|
November 1, 2006
On November 5, Nicaraguans will elect a new president. Sandinista leader and former President Daniel Ortega, defeated in the last three presidential elections, leads in the polls and appears on the verge of an extraordinary political comeback. U.S. criticism of Ortega in the run-up to the election has sought to raise concern that he would align the country with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, a vocal antagonist of the Bush administration. Although Ortega has touched on anti-capitalist themes in his campaign, he has avoided strong statements about the United States. Of greater concern, experts say, are the deals between the two major political parties made ahead of the election, which could have a corrosive effect on Nicaraguan institution-building for years to come.
The Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) is a leftist political party inspired by Augusto Cesar Sandino, a revolutionary who initiated a guerrilla war against the U.S. occupation of Nicaragua in the 1930s. When the FSLN came to power in 1979, it set up a ruling junta, quickly allied itself with Fidel Castro’s Cuba and the Soviet Union, and nationalized much of the country’s industry. Since being voted out of power in 1990, the Sandinistas have remained one of two primary political parties in Nicaragua, sharing power with the Constitutional Liberal Party (PLC). The Sandinistas ran in—and lost—presidential elections in 1990, 1996, and 2001, with Ortega as candidate each time.
In 2000, Ortega and President Arnoldo Aleman of the PLC formed el Pacto, a political agreement which gave them lifetime parliamentary seats and immunity from prosecution, and united their two parties in the National Assembly to assert influence over most of Nicaragua’s political institutions. Experts say el Pacto has weakened the Supreme Court and allowed Ortega to pack the Supreme Electoral Council [the central election commission] with allies. El Pacto has “kept the façade of democracy while gutting it out from the inside,” said presidential candidate Eduardo Montealegre in a speech at the Heritage Foundation.
The United States has a century-long history of intervention in Nicaragua. Relations took a sharp turn for the worse in 1979 when Ortega’s Sandinistas seized power and established an authoritarian state. The Reagan administration responded by backing the Contra rebels, eventually becoming embroiled in the Iran-Contra scandal, in which U.S. agents were discovered selling arms to Iran to fund the Contras. Since the Sandinistas were voted out of power in 1990, the United States has had generally good relations with Nicaragua. In 2005, Nicaragua signed the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA).
This year, theU.S.government has been outspoken in its criticism of Ortega. U.S. Ambassador Paul Trivelli, who sent letters to Nicaraguan conservative party leaders in April proposing they unite behind one presidential candidate, has been accused by election monitors from the Organization of American States (OAS) of meddling in Nicaragua’s political affairs. He has called Ortega a “tiger who has not changed his stripes,” and cautioned that an Ortega victory would lead to “an introduction of a Chavez model here on the Isthmus.”
“Based on the statement of some officials, you wonder if [U.S. officials] realize it is a sovereign country,” says Michael Shifter, vice-president for policy at the Inter-American Dialogue. Stephen Kinzer, a longtime New York Times foreign correspondent and author of Overthrow: America's Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq, believes the Reagan-era policymakers still in the U.S.government are “very eager to establish in the panoply of American foreign policy that the Contra cause was a great cause.”
But others say concerns about what a Sandinista victory would mean for Nicaragua are legitimate. “Every word of the U.S. pronouncements about Nicaragua has been magnified,” says Eric Farnsworth, vice president of the Council of the Americas, a New York-based group that advocates free trade in the region. But he also says the United States should be careful about appearing too heavy-handed in its rhetoric about the country.
Yes. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has sent fertilizer to Sandinista mayors at preferential prices, a move that Nicaraguan newspaper La Prensa joked would “grow the Sandinista vote.” And in April, Chavez signed a petroleum deal with the Venezuelan association of mayors to send oil directly to Sandinista municipalities (CSMonitor) before the elections.
Experts are concerned the elections will not be transparent. The parliamentary bloc formed by el Pacto pushed through legislation that decreases the percentage of the vote necessary to win the presidency from 45 percent to 35 percent of the vote. This change benefits Ortega, who has never garnered more than 35 percent of the vote in his three previous bids for the presidency. “If you can game the system,” as Farnsworth notes, “democracy can be used to elect people who are not necessarily democratic.”
On Election Day, many of the voting places in Nicaragua will only have poll monitors from the Sandinista party. The Carter Center and the OAS are sending limited numbers of international monitors. While in a country like Mexico, monitors from all parties are present at voting places, in Nicaragua the other parties don’t have enough capacity, says Shifter. And if the first round of the election is very close, some experts are concerned the electoral council, whose composition has been manipulated to heavily favor Ortega, will step in and influence the vote’s result. “The key is going to be the size of the margin,” says Kinzer.
It depends on who wins the presidency, of course, though Ortega is expected to be quite powerful even if he loses. If Monteleagre wins, he will seek warm relations with the United States, but he will be constrained by el Pacto. If Ortega is victorious, most experts say the United States will take a wait-and-see approach. If, as some expect, he aligns himself with Venezuela’s Chavez and pulls out of CAFTA, as he has threatened, it’s possible the United States would cut off aid, including a $175 million agreement signed in 2005 to fund poverty-reduction projects. But if he shows a willingness to cooperate with Washington, “it would not be wise to shut him out completely,” says Shifter. And some think Ortega might have changed. “Look, Alan Garcia [former Peruvian leader from 1995-2000 whose presidency was marked by economic crisis and human rights abuses] was elected in Peru and he is a changed man. It’s possible Ortega could do the same,” says Farnsworth.
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