URL: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2089-2437810,00.html
November 05, 2006
The Sunday Times (UK)
Ortega is back, thanks to a wily wife
Matthew Campbell, Managua
NICARAGUA'S unpredictable politics are a perfect match for its
earthquakes and smouldering volcanoes, but if Daniel Ortega, the
former dictator, returns to power in presidential elections today, it
will have more to do with a woman.
The prospect of victory for Ortega has stirred fear among Nicaraguans
and, in a repeat of events two decades ago, irritation in Washington
at a "domino effect" of resistance to America's regional sway.
Ronald Reagan's favourite bogeyman has skilfully exploited a split in
the conservative vote for his third attempt to win back power in the
impoverished country renowned for its poets, cheap rum and beauty
queens.
The leading lady in the drama, however, is Rosario Murillo, the mother
of six of his children. Her influence over him has grown considerably
since she came home in the early 1990s after a long affair with
another man.
Ortega, who spent much of the 1960s in prison -- he wrote a poem
entitled I Never Saw Managua in Miniskirts -- had also strayed from
the conjugal bed when, as leader of the Sandinista revolutionary
government in the 1980s, he attracted a string of beauties with his
rash and muscular defiance of America and dalliance with Moscow.
People were horrified, however, when Zoilamerica Narvaez, his
stepdaughter, then aged 30, accused him in 1999 of rape and sexual
abuse from the age of 11. She said abuse continued until she left home
aged 19.
Instead of backing her daughter, Murillo, a fiery orator and esoteric
thinker, accused her of lying. This effectively saved Ortega from
jail. He has been beholden to her ever since.
"Murillo has quite a hold over him," said Carlos Fernando Chamorro, a
political analyst.
Indeed, in a remarkable departure from his days as an atheist
revolutionary, Ortega wed her in church last year. Until then the
couple had lived in sin. The marriage, it seems, was part of a broader
strategy by Murillo to make peace with the church and a fervently
Catholic electorate.
After seizing power in 1979, the Sandinistas aroused the wrath of the
Pope by encouraging priests to exchange crucifixes for guns in the
struggle for social justice in Latin America. Miguel Obando y Bravo,
the Archbishop of Managua, was made a cardinal thanks to his
opposition to Ortega's regime.
At Murillo's prodding, however, Ortega, who was voted out in 1990,
last year set about making it up with the 81-year-old cardinal. The
courtship worked and Obando y Bravo married the couple in Managua's
cathedral.
This new friendship brought with it the blessing of Roberto Rivas,
president of the electoral commission and an oddity in tropical
Managua because of the pet penguin he keeps in an air-conditioned
enclosure at home. A close associate of Obando y Bravo, he appears to
have given the Sandinistas a nudge by speeding up the registration
process for Ortega voters.
Just as bizarre is the support of former military enemies from the
contra war of the 1980s, when the Reagan White House broke the law by
selling arms to Iran to finance a rebel army waging war on the
Sandinistas. The balding 61-year-old Ortega has picked a former contra
leader whose house he expropriated as his vice-presidential running
mate.
Instead of haranguing the "Yankees", Ortega now prefers quoting the
Pope. Gone is the olive green: he dresses in white.
Another Murillo touch was evident in the colour of the campaign
posters -- pink -- and choice of a campaign theme tune: a Latino
version of John Lennon's Give Peace a Chance. Having been accused of
turning Nicaragua into a Soviet proxy state in the 1980s, Ortega was
last week promoting nothing more menacing than reconciliation.
If the forces of God have helped Ortega, so has American meddling in a
country whose aversion to being treated as a US protectorate is rooted
in history.
In the 19th century William Walker, an American adventurer and
mercenary, briefly made himself president. A century later America
occupied the country for more than two decades until a revolt forced
the marines to hand over power to the American-friendly Somoza
dynasty, which ran the country as a family concern until fleeing the
Sandinista advance into Managua on captured army tanks.
Last week the Uncle Sam role was being played by Paul Trivelli, the
American envoy to Managua, who put his foot in it earlier this year by
saying of Jose Rizo, one of the conservative candidates: "If it looks
like a duck, walks like a duck and swims like a duck, it probably is a
duck." Rizo, a silver-haired coffee farmer, has been mocked ever since
in the local press as a "duck", which in Nicaraguan slang also means
homosexual.
The envoy's friends say he meant only to imply Rizo is a puppet for
Arnoldo Aleman, the former president known as "the Fat Man", who is
under house arrest for embezzlement. Rizo has denied the claim.
Trivelli has angered Nicaraguans further by telling businessmen not to
give money to Rizo's party and revoking the visas of more than two
dozen of its most prominent figures, accusing them of corruption. The
Organisation of American States, which is observing the election, has
criticised Trivelli by name and even Oliver North, the former "Iran
contra" marine colonel, who visited Managua ahead of the voting, urged
him to "pipe down".
The Americans, who prefer Eduardo Montealegre, the other conservative
contender, are not the only ones with a favoured candidate. Hugo
Chavez, the populist Venezuelan leader who has compared George Bush to
the devil, has been supplying Sandinista mayors with cut-rate oil and
fertiliser, raising anxieties in Washington about Nicaragua becoming
the latest recruit in the regional, anti-American coalition he has
styled the "axis of good".
Ortega, who used to refer to America as the "enemy of humanity", has
said he wants friendly relations with Washington, but officials there
who cut their teeth in the contra war have warned that his victory
would jeopardise future economic aid.
"Threatening sanctions is counterproductive," said Sofia Montenegro, a
former Sandinista militant upset with Ortega for betraying
revolutionary ideals. "It just makes people more sympathetic to
Ortega."
By far the biggest boon to Ortega, however, was the deal he cut with
Aleman in which they agreed on a change in election laws so that a
presidential candidate could win with just 35% of the vote.
Yesterday Ortega was within a hair's breadth of that goal, raising
fears of a dispute over the results. Worse still is the prospect of a
violent backlash if he wins. "I wouldn't bet on the result," said
Marvin Lacayo, a businessman whose family fled after the Sandinista
victory in 1979. "I just pray that Ortega's lot don't come back to put
us through all that turmoil again."