The surprising comeback of an ex-guerrilla

last updated 8 January 2015

Nicaragua

“We may not be happy about it,” said Costa Rica’s La Nacion in an editorial, “but we have to respect it.” Assuming the results of last weekend’s election stand, Daniel Ortega will once again be president of Nicaragua. The former communist guerrilla leader led the Sandinistas in their violent overthrow of the Somoza regime in 1979, and he battled the U.S.-backed Contras throughout the ’80s. Now he is taking power again, this time democratically. He isn’t exactly the people’s choice, though. Ortega won with less than 40 percent of the vote, thanks largely to the right’s failure to unite around a single opponent. Ortega claims that he is a changed man who has given up his Marxist ideology and undemocratic ways. Fortunately for Nicaragua, it doesn’t really matter whether he has seen the light. “Given the existing balance of power and institutional structures, it would be extremely difficult for the ex-commandante to seize dictatorial powers, even if he wanted to.”

Ortega seems sincere in his new incarnation, said Efren Bonilla in Honduras’ Tiempo. His campaign speeches repeatedly referred “to God, to love, to respect for life, to peace and mercy.” The theme song for his campaign was actually John Lennon’s “Give Peace a Chance.” What a turnaround from the extremist militancy of 25 years ago. This Ortega is a far cry from the armed rebel who vowed to wrest the country’s wealth from the few and give it to the poor. Indeed, he is flush with the wealth he gained—largely through nationalizing estates and “redistributing” them to his cronies—while he held power in the 1980s. He is, in fact, one of the “prosperous businessmen” he once condemned as the “Nicaraguan oligarchy.”

That’s why leftists may be in for a shock, said Onofre Guevara Lopez in Nicaragua’s El Nuevo Diario. Sandinista supporters have been dancing in the streets “as if it were 1979 all over again.” But this is a new era. Nicaragua is no longer isolated. We have a thriving economy, and we’re bound by treaties and budget commitments. Don’t look for President Ortega to make drastic changes for the betterment of the poor. He’ll have much less power than he had before. After all, he’s a democratically elected politician now, not a revolutionary.