nimh wrote: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.
There was a lot of hope resting on Hewites. He was easily the most popular politician in Nicaragua, attracting Sandinistas of yore as well as rightists with his fight against corruption in Managua. It was on Ortega's behalf that Lewites, rising star for the presidential nomination, was thrown out of the FSLN in February last year.
Since then he was running as the presidencial candidate for the Alianza "Herty 2006". There was hope that Hewites could steer a course benefitting the poor. Something like 75 percent of the population are living below the poverty line - a result of years of neo-liberal (that's neoconservative, for our American friends) politics. And there was hope that Hewites might be able to steer a somewhat socialist course with the approval of the United States.
Lewites called himself a man of the center-left, whereas he called Ortega a man of the "orthodox left of the 70s and 80s". Lewites started his revolutionist career in 1960, trafficking arms from Costa Rica to Nicaragua, was caught and imprisoned by the Somoza regime, later moved to the United States where he organized weapons which he smuggled across the Mexican border and into Nicaragua.
Nevertheless, he said about Ortega's bid for presidency: "I grew up fighting against a dictatorship, and I have no intentions dying under a dictatorship". Apparently an opinion many former friends of Ortega hold.
