URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/13/opinion/13llosa.html
[The tone of this is irritating -- this guy celebrates it as a good thing -- but the narrative is interesting.]
The New York Times
November 13, 2006
Op-Ed Contributor
¡Viva el Capitalismo!
By ÁLVARO VARGAS LLOSA
Guatemala City
THE irony could not be more poignant. Twenty years ago today, Ronald
Reagan went on national television and admitted his governments
involvement in an arms deal with Iran, the proceeds of which, we later
found out, were diverted to the contra rebels fighting a Marxist
regime in Central America. Now Daniel Ortega, the man those funds were
aimed against, has just been elected president of Nicaragua.
And the irony does not stop there. A few days before last weeks
elections, Oliver North, the face of the Iran-contra scandal, landed
in Managua and asked Nicaraguans to vote for the right-wing Liberal
Constitutionalist Party, which is made up in part of old contra
sympathizers, and to stop Mr. Ortega.
Whatever else he might have been doing all these years, Mr. North has
not been following Nicaraguan politics: for the last seven years, the
Liberal Constitutionalists have been allied with Mr. Ortegas
Sandinistas, and they paved the way for Mr. Ortegas victory by
lowering the electoral bar for a first-round victory and by helping
split the anti-Sandinista vote. The Gipper must be turning in his
grave.
Some will be tempted to conclude that Mr. Ortegas return amounts to a
revival of the cold war dynamic in the Western Hemisphere and, in
particular, to a retrospective impugning of Reagans policy in Central
America. Some might also be inclined to see the vote as a confirmation
that the radical left is sweeping Latin America and that the
Venezuelan leader Hugo Chávez, who supported Mr. Ortega and provides
municipalities under Sandinista governments with fertilizer and oil,
has scored a strategic victory.
That would be giving too much credit to Nicaragua, which is today a
political and economic pygmy in the region; to left-wing radicalism,
which had little to do with Mr. Ortegas comeback; and to Mr. Chávez,
whose favored candidates were recently repudiated in Peru and in
Mexico, the two countries where he concentrated most of his efforts.
Daniel Ortegas comeback is the result of two factors. One is the
power-sharing pact that the former President Arnoldo Alemán sealed
with the Sandinistas in 1999, with a view to protecting himself and
his Liberal Constitutionalist cronies from charges of corruption after
leaving office. (It didnt work out well for Mr. Alemán, who in 2003
was given a 20-year sentence.) The deal they came up with gave Mr.
Ortega, who was politically moribund at the time, the kiss of life and
gave the Sandinistas seats on the Supreme Court and control of some
key institutions, including the election authority.
The other factor was Mr. Ortegas betrayal of his own creed. The
Sandinista leader shed his Marxist rhetoric and, conscious of the need
to seduce a profoundly Catholic nation, mended fences with the Roman
Catholic Church he had once persecuted. His old nemesis, Cardinal
Miguel Obando, presided over the religious (should I say bourgeois?)
ceremony in which Mr. Ortega married his longtime partner last year.
The man responsible for the infamous piñata a series of laws put in
place just before he lost power in 1990 that allowed the Sandinista
leaders to take for themselves confiscated property worth hundreds of
millions of dollars is now talking about his respect for private
property and foreign investment.
He has tossed the olive green fatigues and the red and black flag; his
campaign colors were pink and turquoise, and his theme song a Spanish
version of John Lennons Give Peace a Chance. He apologized for the
massacre of the indigenous Miskito people that took place in the north
of the country during his first regime and, finally, he instructed his
legislators to vote for a bill banning abortion even in cases of a
threat to the womans life.
What this farcical saga tells us is that Daniel Ortega was much more
interested in being president than in being principled and, more
important, that anyone who wants to lead todays Nicaragua needs to
persuade voters that he will respect the rule of law and private
property, will try to lure investment and will be sensitive to the
nations religious heritage. The fact that Mr. Ortegas past conduct
casts a shadow over the proclamation that he is a reformed character
does not detract from the fact that Nicaragua has not voted for
radical leftist policies.
What about the broader claims that Mr. Ortegas victory is a
confirmation that radical left-wing politics are back in Latin
America? True, in addition to Mr. Chávez, leftists have taken power in
Brazil, Chile, Panama, and Uruguay. (Mr. Chávezs efforts have
apparently led the Bush administration to quietly lift a ban on the
training of military personnel from 11 Latin American countries in the
United States.) But these other Latin American socialists belong to
the vegetarian left rather than the carnivorous left. Other than the
occasional Castro-like rhetorical flourish, the new leaders are
avoiding the mistakes of the old left, including confrontation with
the United States and Europe, fiscal profligacy and nationalization of
industry.
Hugo Chávez has been unable to reproduce his regime in any other
country except in Bolivia, where President Evo Morales is now
increasingly unpopular and has been forced to backtrack on some of his
revolutionary announcements. Mr. Morales, for example, campaigned on a
promise to force the nationalization of Bolivias natural gas fields,
but last month came to a deal in which two major Brazilian companies
agreed to share revenues and operate as service providers to the state
energy company. He even sent his vice president to Washington in July
to appeal to the White House for renewed trade preferences.
And in the week since his victory, Mr. Ortega has been sending the
signal that he thinks joining the vegetarians will bring him more
credit than being a clone of Hugo Chávez without the oil. No one is
going to allow the seizure of property big or small, he told a group
of Nicaraguan businessmen after his victory. We need to eradicate
poverty, but you dont do that by getting rid of investment and those
who have resources.
Now, whether the moderate left will continue to enjoy the support of
the masses is an entirely different question. Since many of these new
leaders are not engaging in systematic reform, it is likely that
voters will hold them to account should their economies now buoyed by
the forces of globalization, through rising exports and foreign
investment start to sag. But for the moment, its their show, and the
carnivores are outside looking in.
In a sense, these moderate left-wing leaders, perhaps now including
Mr. Ortega, are a lot more in sync with what Ronald Reagan and his men
were aiming for in Central America in the 1980s than Oliver North
would care to admit. As they fall over themselves pandering to the
church, the business community and conservative voters, theres little
time left over for creating a New Man.
Álvaro Vargas Llosa, the author of Liberty for Latin America, is the
director of the Center on Global Prosperity at the Independent
Institute in Washington.