MANAGUA, Nicaragua _ Daniel Ortega is campaigning. Again. This is the fifth time that the Sandinista leader is running for the Nicaraguan presidency. Nothing new about that. What is different is the way he is doing it.

Ortega still fiercely criticizes the United States _ just as he did two decades ago _ and defends dictator Fidel Castro as if the Cuban leader were his older brother.
But the pink, yellow and green colors that surround us at his campaign headquarters do nothing to soften his harsh statements.

This 60-year-old man, with few grey hairs and a slight heart problem, believes that the United States is "an empire out to dominate, judge, impose," and that U.S. President George W. Bush is a terrorist "who has committed massive murder over there in Iraq."

And when I ask him what he would do if he had to choose between Bush or Castro as a friend, he came out with a quick answer:

"First of all, for me Fidel is definitely not a dictator," he told me. "He is a revolutionary who defends the dignity of the Latin American people."

But when I ask him if Castro _ who has held on to power for 47 years _ is responsible for the deaths of thousands of people and for imprisoning his political opponents, Ortega refuses to answer.

"No, I don't criticize him," he said about Castro. "I criticize American policy and its trade embargo of Cuba."

When I asked Ortega if it wasn't incongruent and hypocritical to want democracy for Nicaragua, but not for Cuba, he answered with a question:

"What is democracy?"

My response that it is a system in which whoever receives the most votes in multiparty elections takes power, seemed ingenuous to him.

"That's what they teach four-year-olds," he said.

Ortega's friends are all well-known and he doesn't conceal the fact. "I feel like a brother to Gadhafy, to Chavez, Fidel, Evo ... "

That is the old Daniel.

Ortega rose to the presidency in 1984 in dubious circumstances, five years after the Sandinistas toppled dictator Anastasio Somoza. But since the Frente Sandinista de Liberacion Nacional lost in the 1990 elections against Violeta Chamorro, Ortega has suffered further defeats, both in 1996 and 2001. This time, however, he is expecting a different outcome.

And this is the new Daniel.

He has been seen frequently with Cardinal Miguel Obando y Bravo, and last September, Ortega `re-married' his wife, poet Rosario Murillo, in a Catholic Church wedding ceremony.

"I felt I was keeping a promise to my mother," he explained. "She always pressured me to get married (in church). She was very traditional, very Catholic." And so he did.

His critics _ and there are many of them _ say that he's demonstrating greater religiosity because he's trying to win the vote of the undecided in the November elections. On the contrary, he told me his Catholic faith is sincere.

"I was raised in a Catholic family," he insisted.

And as proof, he told me that when he was young he almost entered a Catholic seminary, that he takes Communion and believes in God (but not in Heaven and Hell). However, this hasn't stopped people from facetiously calling him Saint Daniel.

On more terrestrial issues, Ortega has even negotiated with one of his chief political adversaries, Arnoldo Aleman _ former president of Nicaragua who has been charged with corruption and is currently under house arrest _ but he doesn't consider him a friend. Thanks to his negotiations with Aleman, the Assembly made changes to Nicaragua's electoral laws, allowing a candidate to win with as little as 35 percent of the vote.

Ortega has also been seen lately traveling in a new two-engine, eight-seat helicopter (Bell 222) which, according to Managua's daily newspaper La Prensa, costs $1,500 an hour to rent. But Ortega was quick to deny that it was a loan from Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.

"No, that's absurd," he responded to my question. The helicopter belongs to "a Guatemalan company: you can check it out," he insisted, and that "supporters from the Frente Sandinista de Liberacion Nacional" cover his operating expenses.

"Campaigns are expensive," he explained. "There is no cheap campaign."

As a journalist, it was impossible for me to talk to Ortega and not ask him about two very delicate matters: the charges of rape and sexual abuse brought against him by his stepdaughter, Zoilamaerica Narvaez, and the murder of Carlos Guadamuz, a journalist and member of his own party.

"That's a chapter that's been closed," he said, when I asked about the charges made by Narvaez eight years ago.

Her testimony is full of graphic descriptions. "Daniel Ortega raped me in 1982," she charges in her public testimony published on the Internet, and goes on to describe it in detail.

"That is totally false," he responded, unblinking.

"Is she lying?"

"She is lying. Of course she is."

I tried to establish contact with Narvaez but, in a cordial and brief e-mail message to me, she declined to discuss the matter.

Ortega had never commented directly about the 2004 murder of journalist Carlos Guadamuz, which occurred in front of the radio station where he worked.

"Who killed him?" I asked.

"The man who killed him has been arrested."

"His son," I told him, "accused you, two hours after the murder, of being `the real' perpetrator (of the crime)."

"That was an emotional reaction on his part," he replied, and proceeded to explain that before his murder, Guadamuz himself had sent him a "short note" asking that they settle their past differences. (Ortega had refused to endorse his bid as mayor of Managua.)

I ended the interview asking him about the significance of the lively colors he was using for his campaign.

"They represent the colors that Nicaragua has in its landscape, in its customs, in its rich culture," he told me.
What Nicaraguans still don't really know is if this is a new Daniel Ortega or, simply, the same politician as before _ with new electoral trappings of a different color.

"Last question. Do you think you are going to win?"