Impressive Opposition

The loyal opposition in Nicaragua has chosen two formidable personalities to represent it in next year’s presidential election, Violeta Barrios de Chamorro and Virgilio Godoy Reyes.

Mrs. Chamorro, publisher of the newspaper La Prensa and the widow of its former publisher, Pedro Joaquin Chamorro, was a safe choice to head the ticket. Her late husband is revered in Nicaragua as a hero of almost saintly stature. His newspaper was a foe of former dictator Anastasio Somoza, and Chamorro’s assassination in 1978 sparked the popular uprising that brought the dictator down. The victorious Sandinistas even asked Mrs. Chamorro to serve in their first post-revolutionary government, just one sign of how respected the Chamorro name is in Nicaragua.

Mrs. Chamorro has also never been a member of a political party, so she can campaign as a nonpolitician, a strategy that can be as effective in Nicaragua as it sometimes is here. But, in fact, she is highly political. Mrs. Chamorro resigned her government post in less than a year over differences with the Sandinistas. Since then she has used La Prensa as an effective, if sometimes strident, critic of their effort to turn Nicaragua into a Marxist-Leninist state.

Her running mate is an attorney who heads the left-of-center Independent Liberal Party. Godoy Reyes’ selection caused the most problems at the meeting where 14 groups in the united opposition--ranging from Communists to the country’s private business sector--nominated Mrs. Chamorro. Believing they have suffered the most under the Sandinistas, business leaders insisted that the ticket include a free-market conservative. But, given the overall youth of Nicaragua’s population, and the fact the Sandinistas have had 10 years to try to indoctrinate it with revolutionary fervor, leftist parties argued for Godoy Reyes and prevailed.

The risk now is that business leaders and other conservatives will sulk on the sidelines rather than campaign for the United Nicaraguan Opposition ticket. Without them, it will be hard to wage a viable campaign against the Sandinistas, who have all the powers of government at their disposal. Unless the Nicaraguan opposition stays united, it is unlikely that even a Chamorro can defeat the Sandinistas in a fair election.