Early counts show Ortega win

Re: Early counts show Ortega win
That alone tells me there's a problem.

Things would be a lot better had they chanted a song like "Fu*king Hostile" or something.

I wasn't all pro Sandinista in the old days, but wasn't anti either. Re sympathy one way or the other, given a choice, I picked Ortega. I thought the contra thing was ridiculous. Saw recently in some article that Ortega has found religion. Time for me to use one of those smilie things, but I won't.

I do so wish we didn't try to orchestrate the whole world, first, and, second, do it so badly. I really don't care what the white house thinks of Ortega.

I sooooo hope we don't do another starve 'em out routine.

They claim to be fighting in Iraq for a nation's right to be democratic, but when someone they don't like gets elected they get all huffy. You either support democracy or you don't, all the time, I figure.

I pretty much see it like osso.

It never seems to dawn on us to welcome people with good intent for the impoverished.

I pretty much see it like edgar. Nobody has yet made the claim that the election was rigged. Ergo, the people want Ortega. How is that any of our (the USA's) beeswax? Seems to me the Nicuaragans have a right to elect whomever they wish. That's what 'democracy' means.

So, we're not arguing.

We've made a lot of stuff out beeswax.

No indeed. Instead we get caught in the avalanche of ideals: advocate for the poor = socialist = communist = kill them now before they take over our country!!! Really, they did such a good job indoctrinating us in the last half of the last century.

We've made a lot of stuff our beeswax, much of it weird. So weird that our criteria are flopping about in confusion.

Re: Early counts show Ortega win


I could say a lot about this... Some people really ought to spend significant time in Managua. Without their credit card.

Might help them figure out why people vote for the Sandinistas.

A boss of mine's daughter was there in the devastating earthquake in the late sixties.

I was emotionally for the sandanistas, but am not inclined and wasn't then to say pure marxism works. Thus my self description of ambivalence. I like aspects of capitalism.

I think of myself as very middle, whereas most on a2k would think of me as left of the devil, except nimh, and maybe dlowan, who think of me as a mild US liberal.

Enough of me. Let these people work it out, without trade barricades, etc.

I'd like to hear what Fbaezer says.

Wot? You're saying you're not a mild US liberal?

In case it's not clear, I am for us in the US not putting our toes in this. My preference would be that we wish him well, but I'm old enough not to dream.

Speaking of dreaming -

consider if the US had always stood up for the poor and disenfanchised?

mild? I an probably too polite.

True, though I dont know whether Ortega is one of those people.

I was just a kid in the Sandinista days - well, a teenager - and I was all for 'em. Passionately so.

Looking back, its easier to see where things went wrong - the drift from the 1979 revolution's popular fervor and sincere desire for an independent form of socialism, to increasing dependency on and emulation of the Soviet Union... Corruption and the increasing submission to the temptation of authoritarian clampdowns... Community action fuelled by idealistic fervor edging over into Maoist-type militancy... Increasing shortages of everything, which were easily and rightly blamed on the US blockade, but with which communist economics surely had to do something as well.

That said, a lot of good things were accomplished then too. A near-unprecedented literacy drive. Leaps ahead in health care for ordinary people. It's really sad to read about how now, sixteen years after the Sandinistas were voted out, illiteracy is all the way back up - I dont have the numbers at hand, but I was shocked when I read it - such a waste.. It was just one and a half generation that had the chance. Now they're back in the gutter.

I read yesterday that Nicaragua is now the second poorest country in all of Latin-America - only Haiti is poorer.

Its easy to imagine nostalgia for the Sandinista days when there was at least idealism, and hope - at least for those who believed. Now, there is nothing but exploitation in the tax-free zones and unemployment and poverty outside them.

But Sandinistas are one thing, Daniel Ortega is another.

Ortega is as much part and parcel of the current corrupt system as the government leaders. Under a pact with the former conservative government, he already acquired key power positions in the past years. And used them to fill positions with cronies. Ortega is himself very, very rich indeed nowadays.

In the long years out of power, his party has also learned to make strategic compromises. Many of the old Socialist ideals were quietly taken off the agenda. Ortega announced he would work with the IMF. At the same time, as Osso noted, he found religion, and started rallying the poor more with a sort of messianistic religious rhetoric.

He has continued to lead his party in authoritarian fashion. Many of his allies deserted him in the long years after 1990 - not only because all seemed lost, but also because all kinds of unsalabrious stories emerged. Not the least of which being those of his daughter, who told that she had been abused by him as a child.

Dissident, intellectual Sandinistas broke off from Ortega's party, and founded the Sandinista Renewal Movement, with the aim to return to the ideals of the revolution and at the same time to establish a more democratic, moderate alternative, which would be more focused on dialogue and less on rhetorics and powerplay.

This Movement, just half a year ago or so, was polling roughly equal with Ortega and the two main rightwing parties. Its leader was the charismatic, hugely popular mayor of Managua, Herty Lewites. Unfortunately, he died of a heart attack in July. His successor candidate for the Presidency, Edmundo Jarquin, never became quite as popular, and remained stuck in the mid- to low-10s in the polls, even as Ortega surged.

In short, mixed feelings.

Nicaragua deserves better than the miserable poverty that 16 years of capitalist recipes have landed it in. The Sandinista regime was rightly re-evaluated in a critical light even by many of its former supporters. It suffered from many of the same flaws as other communist or communist-leaning countries. But what has come since has been no better, not for most. And the progress that was made, at the time, for ordinary people, has been squandered. So it's gratifying to see the left win, with its red and black flags. Change.

But don't expect too much. Ortega is indeed a different man now than he was back then - but not necessarily a better one. The worst case scenario is that his party, back in power, will be as authoritarian as back then, but with its erstwhile idealism replaced by cynical rhetorics and corruption. Then Nicaragua will simply turn from a rightwing banana republic into a leftwing one. With more luck, especially if Ortega's party will need the support of the Sandinista Renewal Movement to govern, Ortega's vanity and rhetorical politics can be tempered, civic freedoms can be safeguarded, and the oil money, which will undoubtedly start flowing from Chavez' Venezuela, will be used for constructive programs, to benefit the poor.

Yah.

Last sentence I have to add: despite the tone that all the above may have had, I am NOT an expert on the topic. If anyone (Old Europe?) thinks or knows that I got the wrong end of the stick on some of this, please jump in and talk.

Yes, fbaezer, also hoping to hear from him about this..

I used to be fiercely pro-Sandinista.
Somoza was the epithome of the mean Latin American dictator.
We followed the war with interest, it was close and dear to us.
We gave money, sent boots, technical assistance...

A close friend of mine went to work to Nicaragua, in a school-agricultural comune program near the areas where the US financed contras warred against the Sandinistas. Great stories.
When he came back to Mexico he said the Sandinistas would lose the election. Lose badly in the cities, and win by a little in the countryside. We didn't want to believe him, but he was right Ortega lost to Chamorro. People were fed up with the Christian-Marxist rethoric, with scarsity and with war (the US dollars spent on weapons did pay off, but in the polling booths).

That was 1990. Most Nicaraguans are young and did not live the Somoza times, and were not old enough to understand the hardships of the Sandinista times. All they know is Violeta (Chamorro), Gordoman (Alemán) and the like. An underdeveloped brand of capitalism with a non solidarian oligarchy. They chose against that. I can't blame them.
Perhaps they didn't have much choice, either. Ortega is neither bright nor modern in his thought. And Nicaragua is so damn poor, I believe he'll fall for Chavez and his petrodollars.