Ortega Headed Back to Nicaraguan Presidency

If the electoral council upholds the vote count as it stands, the next president of Nicaragua will be a former president of Nicaragua. Jose Daniel Ortega Saavedra, or just Daniel Ortega to the yanquís, was president of Nicaragua from 1985 to 1990. He had led the Sandinista communists to power at gun point in 1979 and run things without the benefit of elections for six years. Now, it looks like he will return, but he says he isn’t a communist any more. Apart from Castro, who is?

Indeed, the party of Mr. Ortega (Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional or FSLN) now wants good relations with Mr. Bush’s White House and backs a Central American Free Trade zone. “Sandinista!” is now just an album by the Clash. Indeed, the FLSN has signed up for a deal with the Partido Liberal Constitucionalista (PLC) to form the same kind of duopoly that the American Republicans and Democrats enjoy; el Pacto only serves to keep those in elected office in power. Of course, the fact that the political class in Nicaragua is largely inter-married helps. Mr. Ortega’s vice presidential running mate candidate is the godfather of President Arnoldo Aleman of the PLC, and Mr. Ortega’s daughter is married to a Chamorro of the PLC.

Thus, the revolution is long over, and the Bolshevik firebrands have either died or sold out to the realities of governing (which isn’t really a bad thing). Nicaragua is, once again, a country that doesn’t mean very much in global affairs; it was only the US and USSR's common misunderstanding of geopolitical strategy that made it matter to them. This will remain true until such time as Nicaragua builds a canal to rival Panama’s.

However, the people in Washington have never understood that some places should be left alone because their affairs aren’t worth meddling in. Mr. Reagan famously pointed out that the communists in Nicaragua were just two days drive from Texas. What he failed to tell everybody was that, thanks to their economic system, the communists couldn’t build a car that could go that far without major repairs – readers familiar with Ladas or Trebants may insert appropriate jokes about Marxist auto design here.

No doubt, there will be saber-rattling and nasty things said, but in the end, the Latin American swing to the left is merely that, a course correction after rightist rule for too long. Only gross miscalculation will bring matters back to where they were in the bad old days of the contras and the US selling arms to Iran to fund them. What is troubling is the Bush administration has gross miscalculation as its standard operating procedure in foreign affairs.

© Copyright 2006 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Fedora Linux.

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