Sandinistas' Ortega poised for comeback

MANAGUA, Nicaragua -- Nearly three decades after coming to power behind the barrel of a gun, Washington's Cold War-era nemesis Daniel Ortega has joined hands with former battlefield enemies, changed his campaign colors from revolutionary red to peace-loving pink, and could be on the verge of an electoral comeback.

The mustachioed, 60-year-old Sandinista leader now preaches accommodation, not communism. Promising relief for the poor and protection for the rich, the former guerrilla leads in most published polls with 30 percent or more going into tomorrow 's five-way presidential contest.

Adding to the surreal nature of the campaign in this humid low-rise capital, former White House aide and retired Marine Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North, who oversaw covert arms sales to Iran to raise money for the anti-Sandinista Contra rebels, recently came to town to denounce the leader President Ronald Reagan dubbed "the little dictator."

Ortega left office in 1990, voted out by Nicaraguans fed up with rationing, 30,000 percent hyperinflation, and suppression of opponents. But his present-day supporters say that the past 16 years of corruption and an unfettered free market have brought nothing better for the masses, and for some, that message is working.

Dogged by voters' memories of the 1980s Contra war and allegations that he sexually abused his stepdaughter, Ortega failed in bids to return to power in the last two elections. But a divided opposition is giving him a shot at the margin needed for victory.

Ortega's chances are also boosted by his efforts to turn his campaign into a big tent, making room and deals for erstwhile enemies, from leaders of the Contras and Indians who took up arms against him to the Catholic Church he once suppressed. His running mate is the former Contra negotiator whose six-bedroom home Ortega once confiscated and still lives in today.

The bold red-and-black stripes of the Sandinista flag have been replaced by a soothing pink and turquoise motif on campaign posters, and John Lennon's "Give Peace a Chance" blares from speakers at his campaign rallies. On the stump, he calls Jesus his inspiration and quotes Pope John Paul II. Like his opponents, he promises jobs, education, and health care.

"Daniel has an incredible capacity to listen," said Aldo Díaz Lacayo, a former ambassador to several Latin American nations under the Sandinista government. "He feels others' needs as his own, he's got an iron will, and a great negotiating ability."

But critics ranging from one-time loyalists to old enemies say Ortega's purported reinvention from communist revolutionary to a kindler, gentler social democrat is cynical political theater.

"He talks out of both sides of his mouth -- he says one thing to the poor and another to the rich, one thing to the church and another to feminists," complained Sofía Montenegro, former editorial page editor of the Sandinista newspaper. "He has no scruples, no values. "

In the 1980s, the United States saw Ortega as a proxy for Cuban leader Fidel Castro and the Soviet Union, and backed the anti communist Contra forces against the Sandinistas, who had toppled rightist dictator Anastasio Somoza in 1979. The Contra war that followed killed 30,000 people, destroyed agricultural and livestock production and, along with a US-imposed embargo, left the economy in shambles.

Ortega's election prospects, detractors maintain, say less about his genuine transformation since that painful era than about the desperation and enduring fault lines in Nicaraguan society.

"Sure Daniel could win . . . because the anti-Daniel forces have governed in peacetime and never achieved anything," said a rival candidate for president, Edén Pastora. Better known as "Commander Zero," Pastora led the Sandinista rebels who triumphed in Managua. But when the Sandinistas embraced Marxism, Pastora became a renegade Contra.

Pastora says he believes Ortega has genuinely changed and perhaps learned from his mistakes, but that, more important , Nicaragua and world geopolitics have changed.

"He's not going to be Mother Teresa, but he's not the same Daniel who had control of the army, the police, mass organizations, the media, the support of the Soviet Union and Europe," he said.

While even critics agree that a new Ortega administration would be very unlikely to bring a return to property confiscations and repressive policies, they say his contradictory discourse makes him a candidate who cannot be trusted.

"Obviously, there's desperation from the population to solve their problems, and when a messiah figure appears and promises to solve their problems with zero unemployment and free health and education, they think this is the man," said René González Castillo, president of the American Chamber of Commerce in Managua.

Sociologist Cirilo Otero Escorcia said the problem with Ortega's efforts to forge a wide coalition is that "his enemies don't believe him, and neither do his friends."

Other analysts say that as the opposition leader in the National Assembly who signed a power-sharing pact with a corrupt center-right government in 1999, Ortega cannot be held blameless for the suffering of the poor under 16 years of neoliberal economic policies. His party is guilty of its own corruption: Before leaving office, it seized private property and distributed it to loyalists in a grab known as the "the piñata."

"His rhetoric is agreeable to the downtrodden population, but both as an administrator and in opposition, he hasn't carried it out," Otero said. "Under a Daniel government, we'd see very few changes in economic or foreign policy. . . . There was an incredible abandonment of Nicaraguan society " by the Sandinistas in opposition .

The Bush administration worries that a re elected Ortega would join forces with Venezuela's Hugo Chávez, a leftist-populist who calls Bush "the devil" and who has sent oil and fertilizer to towns run by Sandinista mayors in an effort to boost Ortega's chances.

The US ambassador to Nicaragua, Paul Trivelli, tried unsuccessfully to persuade Ortega's opponents to unite behind one candidate.

On the streets of Managua, some ordinary people see little hope in any of the candidates.

Luciano Galeano, 42, a security guard, lost three brothers who were conscripted during the Contra war. "That's the only thing we ever got from [Ortega] -- war and pain."