Must Ortega Be Fairest of Them All? : Nicaragua: U.S. carping about the Sandinistas’ electoral conduct is baseless; we tolerated worse in our Salvadoran clients’ election last year.

The Bush Administration’s double standard for elections in Central America is hypocritical but understandable. It hides a deeply irrational and anachronistic policy that has little to do with elections and even less with democracy. It has everything to do with domestic politics in Washington.

The double standard is most clearly illustrated by a comparison of U.S. policy toward Nicaragua’s election Sunday and El Salvador’s election last March.

The Administration criticizes the Nicaraguan electoral council as biased because the U.S.-supported opposition coalition, UNO, has only one of the five seats. The inference is that the Sandinista government party has the other four. In fact, two of the remaining seats are held by another opposition party and an independent. Furthermore, of approximately 100 decisions made by the council, only four were not unanimous. In El Salvador, the electoral council represented the centrist and rightist parties; the opposition leftist coalition was excluded. The Administration did not protest that imbalance.

The State Department has criticized the Sandinistas for using government vehicles and other equipment to help their campaign. This is a fair charge; incumbents in Central America (and the United States) often misuse the perks of public office in their election campaigns. But the State Department was silent about similar activities by the incumbent, U.S.-favored Christian Democrats in El Salvador.

The United States criticizes electoral violence and harassment in Nicaragua, blaming it all on Daniel Ortega. Election observers representing the United Nations and the Organization of American States, however, implicate both Sandinistas and UNO members in violence at rallies, but say that it is not instigated by the leadership on either side. The State Department has been conspicuously silent about what the U.S.-backed Contras have done to disrupt the election process. During the month of voter registration last October, when the government was observing a unilateral cease-fire, the Contras executed 15 attacks in which 49 civilians and 26 military reservists (on their way to register) were killed, wounded or kidnaped.

In El Salvador’s election campaign, the United States was quick to criticize the guerrillas’ intimidation of rural officeholders but silent about the climate of official terror organized or condoned by the military. After 10 years of union and peasant leaders being kidnaped, tortured and murdered by death squads, candidates in the leftist Democratic Convergence wore bulletproof vests while campaigning; their workers were harassed and detained by the military; their meetings were surrounded by menacing soldiers.

U.S. distortions about Nicaragua have been so blatant that some international election monitors have criticized the State Department’s case as “greatly overstated” and a “political manipulation” of U.S. public opinion.

Why the deceit and hypocrisy?

The central goal of U.S. policy in the region never was the holding of elections, much less democracy. In Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador, the United States put its considerable weight behind elections that would ensure continuance of regimes dominated by rich elites and ruled by military repression. The aim was to persuade reluctant moderates in Congress to fund counterinsurgency strategies. In Nicaragua, the last election was not U.S.-approved, which was justification for further funding for the Contras, the “democratic resistance.” Insisting on elections fully open to the opposition as a condition for changing U.S. policy, the White House was sure that the Sandinistas would either be discredited (by a fraudulent victory) or ousted. But now the “threat” is a legitimate Sandinista victory--thus the propaganda campaign to discredit the vote in advance.

An honest Sandinista victory would spell the end of congressional support for the Contras. The State Department could pursue the goal of destabilizing the Sandinista government by continuing the isolation strategy--keeping the current economic sanctions and political quarantine in force--and setting new conditions for change (a kind of “sliding goal post” approach).

Alternatively, the United States could change course and adopt a policy of reconciliation: serious aid to resettle the Contras and their families, normalization of diplomatic relations and provision of development assistance.

There are two major obstacles to a policy change, and they have little to do with Nicaragua. One is the reluctance of the Bush Administration to further alienate the Republican right already angry about improved U.S.-Soviet relations and cuts in military spending. Also, a reconciliation policy for Nicaragua would undermine congressional support for continuing the misguided policy on El Salvador. The failure of the U.S. counterinsurgency strategy there and the corruption and brutality of the Salvadoran armed forces have made Congress restive about the $1.4 million a day in aid. Normalizing relations with Managua would admit a painful fact: Nicaragua is not the source of the problem in El Salvador. And Managua has long been willing to negotiate agreements on cross-border arms monitoring.

A rational, pragmatic policy of diplomacy and reconciliation would best serve U.S. interests in Central America. But this can happen only when regional reality, not Administration posturing, is allowed to serve as the touchstone of policy.