Posted on 11/05/2001 11:16:46 AM PST by kattracks
MANAGUA, Nicaragua (AP) - A 73-year-old businessman who suffered expropriation and prison under the Sandinistas won Nicaragua's presidency over Daniel Ortega, the Sandinista leader who was trying to make a comeback 11 years after losing power.
Ortega conceded defeat Monday in his third consecutive election defeat, and supporters of the victorious Liberal Party candidate, Enrique Bolanos, chanted ``Strikeout! Strikeout!'' as they celebrated.
``We accept the mandate of the people and congratulate the Liberal ticket,'' Ortega said.
He vowed to continue working for national reconciliation and for a free-market economy from within the National Assembly, for his Sandinista party, which retains a solid core of support in Nicaragua. ``We are going to support the governability of the country from our strong position in opposition,'' Ortega said. True to his attempts to win better relations with the United States, Ortega did not mention the role the U.S. government may have played in his defeat when it warned of an Ortega victory, invited Bolanos to hand out donated U.S. food and pressured a third candidate to leave the race. Ortega's concession speech came with only 5.4 percent of the vote counted. Later, with 13 percent of the vote tallied, the Supreme Electoral Council showed Bolanos with 53.7 percent compared to Ortega's 44.7 percent. In Sunday's election, an enormous turnout overwhelmed an inefficient election bureaucracy. Some voters were still waiting in line at 11:30 p.m., more than five hours after polls were scheduled to close. But the peacefulness of the election belied claims by outgoing President Arnoldo Aleman that Ortega's supporters had planned election-day violence. Following Aleman's victory over Ortega in 1997, pro-Sandinista students attacked police with rocks and homemade bombs and mortars. After the Sandinista National Liberation Front came to power in a 1979 revolution, it confiscated Bolanos' farm service company. As head of the country's main business chamber, he became a fierce critic of Ortega and was imprisoned. His campaign repeatedly reminded voters of the grim side of the Sandinistas' 1979-90 rule: long food lines, a muzzled press and coffins carrying the bodies of draftees in a war against U.S.-backed Contra rebels. That apparently overcame Ortega's ``path of love'' campaign, which featured pink posters adorned with flowers in an attempt to reach out to non-Sandinista critics of Aleman's government. Bolanos, who was vice president before resigning to run for the presidency, inherits an economy that is struggling under heavy debts and with losses caused by the global economic slowdown. After taking office in January, he may also clash with Aleman, who hand-picked the Liberal candidates for congress. Aleman is expected to lead the congressional delegation because of a law he oversaw that gives former presidents an automatic seat in congress - and immunity from legal action. Aleman's admitted wealth has multiplied many times over since he began public service as mayor of Managua in 1990, and critics accuse him of corruption, which he denies. During his campaign, Bolanos vowed to fight corruption wherever it might be found, saying that ``immunity should not be impunity.'' Voters had relatively little choice in the election. Under a Liberal-Sandinista deal that reformed the constitution, third parties were severely restricted and key posts divided up on a partisan basis. Several parties or candidates that appeared to meet the tough conditions for reaching the ballot were improperly disqualified by the politicized electoral board, according to the independent analyst group Ethics and Transparency. Ortega, 55, vowed that his electoral alliance with non-Sandinista parties would continue, apparently mapping out a long-term strategy to position the Sandinistas as a peaceful, democratic, left-of-center political party. Copyright © 2001 Associated Press. All rights reserved.
Still no Peace Prize yet, Jimmy ?
Looks like the Nicarauguan people learn from experience better than do the American people. Admittedly, their experience was harder.
I don't know, it was so close if there had only been an NPR bureau in Managua before, Ortega might have won.
It was also during that time that Speaker of the House, Jim Wright (D,TX) tried to establish himself as defacto President by generally trying to run the Niguagran operation by witholding funding for our anti-Communist operations in Niguagra and shoving through the Bolin (D,OK) which forbade such funding. This led to the Iran Contra deal as an effort to get money to continue our fight against the Communists. The Dems then tried to use that to impeach President Reagan.
It also, I am afraid, led to a cozy relationship between the CIA and the South American drug dealers as another source of funding for these covert operations. The end of that story is not in sight and it may be what caused Bush to issue his recent EO on exPresidents' papers. Clinton threatened that if he was exposed then he would practice a scorched earth policy against all others. His position as President gave him access to all the classified info so he has many aces up his sleeve even yet. That is why integrity is so important in a president, enough integrity to put country above self, something Clinton can never do.
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