Dressing Up the Contras

Prodded by the Reagan Administration, the leadership of the main rebel organization fighting Nicaragua’s Sandinista government has changed. But the move is a transparent attempt to bolster waning congressional support for the contras , and it does nothing to make the contras more popular among the Nicaraguan people.

The shake-up in the United Nicaraguan Opposition followed several weeks of infighting between the group’s conservative and liberal factions. The main difference between the two factions is the attitude that they take toward the Sandinistas. The conservatives want to overthrow them, but the liberals are willing to negotiate a settlement.

On Tuesday the titular leader of the conservatives, former business executive Adolfo Calero, agreed to resign from the UNO’s three-man directorate. He did so after his liberal counterparts, former Nicaraguan Ambassador Arturo Cruz and political activist Alfonso Robelo, threatened to leave the organization. Cruz and Robelo had charged that conservatives dominate the UNO and refuse to share authority with anyone else. Named to replace Calero in the UNO’s directorate was Pedro Joaquin Chamorro, the son of a newspaper editor whose murder helped incite the overthrow of dictator Anastasio Somoza and put the Sandinistas into power.

Reagan Administration officials want respected civilians like Cruz and Chamorro to “lead” the contras because that makes it easier for President Reagan to persuade Congress to give money to the Nicaraguan rebels. They only hope that Congress does not notice the Somocista thugs, lurking in the background, who have thus far taken the lion’s share of the contra aid. It is worth noting, for example, that Calero will remain the chief civilian leader of the Nicaraguan Democratic Force, the largest and best-armed contra faction--and the most controversial. The other leaders of the FDN are military men, many of them former officers in Somoza’s hated National Guard.

The contras’ shake-up has apparently had little effect on Capitol Hill--witness Wednesday’s vote by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to cut off all military aid to them. It will be hard to sustain that decision over a Reagan veto, which is likely. Still, it should show the President that his maneuver did not make the contras respectable.