Where I Stand — Mike O’Callaghan: Nicaragua election Sunday could put Ortega back into power

Friday, Nov. 2, 2001 | 5:13 a.m.

Mike O'Callaghan is executive editor of the Sun and publisher of the Henderson Home News, where this column first appeared.

Allow me to take your mind off of Afghanistan, anthrax and that strange looking guy your daughter brought home from college. There is an election taking place in Nicaragua this Sunday, which may come as news to most U.S. citizens. There is a possibility that the results of that presidential election could come as a shock to even more of our fellow Americans, if Daniel Ortega is voted back into office after being voted out almost 12 years ago.

You remember Daniel Ortega, who oversaw a revolution in 1979 which put his Sandinista Party in power for 11 years after overthrowing the Somoza dictatorship. He and his nine-man junta received the support of the Soviet Union, Iraq, Cuba, Libya and several other countries that viewed him as a challenge to U.S. power in this hemisphere. Our country also saw the Sandinistas as a threat to our immediate sphere of political influence and supported Nicaraguans resisting them. The resistance forces, we called Contras, were given political, monetary and moral support, which eventually helped force an election in 1990.

Even more than the Contra pressure that forced an election, with observers from several nations, was the failure of the Sandinistas to meet the needs and expectations of Nicaraguans. The seizure of private property by the government was supported for some time, but eventually the people saw those in power taking and keeping the lion's share of what was seized.

I had the opportunity to help oversee the election in 1990 that dumped Ortega. The weeks between that election and the installation of a new president saw a Sandinista-dominated legislative body make legal much of the theft their party had accomplished when Ortega ruled. This legislative theft continued until 1996 when Arnoldo Aleman was elected president. Aleman continued the Nicaraguan nightmare by fine tuning the art of theft and taking care of his corrupt friends.

After returning to Nicaragua several times, including the 1990 and 1996 elections as an outside observer with the Carter Center, I have concluded that by now the people have become desperate. Three years ago, when going there to help the victims of Hurricane Mitch, I was wise enough to avoid the government by working with cooperatives and churches. This tactic got the goods into the hands of those most needy.

I have always believed that people get the kind of government they deserve. This is certainly true in most cases, but the people of Nicaragua deserve better than what they have received from Somoza, Ortega, Chamorro and Aleman. Are they now ready to vote the friend of Castro, Gadhafi, Saddam Hussein and several other well-known international scoundrels back into office? In addition to his friends, Ortega has charges for 20 years of sexually abusing his adopted stepdaughter, 33-year-old Zoilamerica Narvaez Murillo, hanging over his head in the court of Human Rights.

No doubt, the people of that country deserve somebody better than Ortega to lead them. Sunday, they have to choose between him and Enrique Bolanos, the vice president of the outgoing disaster, Aleman. Not much of a choice, but a perfect example of casting a vote for what they may consider the lesser of two evils.

As an outside observer, it would be my belief that anybody but Ortega would be acceptable. A hungry people now, after hurricane-created floods followed by a crop-killing drought, may be willing to gamble on the devil who claims he is reformed and is making all of the best promises.

If Ortega wins, will the leaders of the U.S. accept some responsibility for helping resurrect him by doing little or nothing about a bad situation here in the Americas? During the Reagan and early Bush years we were deeply involved in ousting Ortega. During the last two years of President George Bush's administration, all of President Bill Clinton's administration and the first year of President George W. Bush's administration, we have neglected a struggling people after they voted a bad guy out of office.

When all is said and done, the outcome is up to the people of Nicaragua. The results of Sunday's vote will tell us just how desperate they have become and whether or not a democratic flame still flickers in their minds and hungry bodies.