Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega could become Nicaragua's president once again. He's tried it three times before, and failed each time. For Ortega, the fourth could be the charmed one.
Recent surveys showed Ortega winning in the first round in Sunday's (Nov. 5) election. A "pact" he made with former President Arnoldo Aleman means Ortega will need only 35 percent of the vote and a lead of five points over his closest opponent to win. In case none of the candidates gets these percentages, a second round between the first two candidates will be held.
That is where Eduardo Montealegre, the Liberal Party candidate, sees his opportunity. He is the man who plans to foil Ortega; and, at the same time, stall the leftward tilt overtaking Latin America.
"We are going to stop Ortega," said the 51-year-old former foreign minister and banker during an interview at the Biltmore Hotel in Miami. "This will be the last time Ortega jeopardizes the safety of the Nicaraguan people and that of Central America." Montealegre wants to break what he calls "the Castro-Chavez-Morales _ and Ortega _ axis."
The elections in Nicaragua will be like a political laboratory for Latin America. They won't be like any other of the past, though. This time the vote will either go left or right: to Ortega or to Montealegre who is running second in the polls. (Among the other three candidates only Jose Rizo, from the Liberal Constitutionalist Party, and who has Aleman's blessing, could surprise everybody and sneak past the first two.)
"Ortega hasn't changed," Montealegre told me. He was referring to the new image of the Sandinista leader: recently marrying in the Roman Catholic Church; frequently visiting Nicaragua's former Archbishop Miguel Obando y Bravo; and who has designated an old opponent as his running mate. "The only thing we are seeing is an Ortega with less hair, but who is like the fox that sheds its fur but never its cunning."
Ortega, whom I interviewed in Managua in March, has never deviated from his most radical positions. The Unites States "is an empire whose aim is to dominate, judge, impose," he told me. Ortega thinks U.S. President George W. Bush is a terrorist "who has committed massive murder over there in Iraq."
Montealegre's opinion about the United States is quite different.
"Most of Nicaragua is a friend of the United States," he said. "If you examine the polls and talk to people, you soon realize they want to have good relations with the United States."
In spite of that, Montealegre _ who lived in the United States for eight years _ does not want to be seen as too close to the world's sole superpower.
"Are you the candidate of the United States?" I asked him.