Chamorro Wins in Nicaragua : Ortega Says He Will Accept Foe’s Popular Mandate : Elections: The opposition is also headed for a majority in the National Assembly. The victor says her slain husband’s dream of democracy is realized.

Violeta Barrios de Chamorro captured Nicaragua’s presidency in a historic and decisive electoral defeat of a leftist revolutionary movement that had seized power by force of arms, partial election returns showed Monday.

President Daniel Ortega, his face drawn by a long night of painful reckoning, conceded defeat at dawn Monday in a moving valedictory on his decade-old Sandinista revolution.

“I want to tell all Nicaraguans and all the nations of the world that the president of Nicaragua, and the government, will respect and accept the popular mandate,” he said.

Chamorro, a conservative newspaper publisher whose victory capped a 12-year crusade for her slain husband’s ideals, won 55.2% of the votes cast at 3,381 of the country’s 4,391 polling places, according to the government’s Supreme Electoral Council. Her candidacy was openly backed by the Bush Administration.

Ortega, candidate of the leftist Sandinista National Liberation Front, won 40.9%, and eight other candidates split the remainder.

The 14-party National Opposition Union (UNO) that nominated Chamorro also appeared to be winning a clear majority in the 90-seat unicameral National Assembly and control of municipal councils in Managua and most of the provincial capitals.

The 60-year-old president-elect was the wife of Pedro Joaquin Chamorro, the best-known opponent of the 43-year Somoza family dictatorship. Chamorro’s murder in 1978 fueled a Sandinista-led guerrilla uprising that toppled President Anastasio Somoza in 1979 and set up a five-member junta that included her and Ortega.

She quit the next year, claiming that the Sandinistas were creating a Marxist-Leninist system, and turned her late husband’s newspaper, La Prensa, into a voice of opposition.

“We knew that in a free election, we would achieve a democratic republic of the kind Pedro Joaquin always dreamed,” the silver-haired publisher, who was seated to rest a broken knee, told hundreds of jubilant and disbelieving supporters in a post-midnight celebration at a Managua steakhouse.

“The Nicaraguan people have given a magnificent example of civility, demonstrating to the world that we want to live in democracy, peace and freedom,” she declared.

“This is the first election in our history that, God willing, will produce a peaceful change of government,” she added. “It is an election that will never produce exiles, political prisoners or confiscation. There are no winners and losers here.”

Hours later, the 44-year-old Ortega sat in an auditorium of the capital’s Olof Palme Convention Center, clasping his wife’s hand and fighting back tears. Beside him were Foreign Minister Miguel D’Escoto, Vice President Sergio Ramirez and Bayardo Arce, the man who managed his well-organized electoral campaign.

The official vote count was not over, but a Sandinista victory was too much to expect, the president admitted. It would “break mathematical rules.”

As supporters in his audience sobbed, the president nevertheless tried to strike a positive and triumphant note.

“I believe that in this historic moment, the principal contribution we Sandinistas, we Nicaraguan revolutionaries, can make to the Nicaraguan people is the guarantee of a pure and clean electoral process, which warms our consciences.”

He added “that today more than ever we act with firmness, conviction and certainty that the steps we have taken have been correct steps, in accord with our proposals.”

Ortega did not mention Chamorro by name in the speech. But it was a dignified and reflective message from a comandante who once declared that the Sandinistas, even if defeated at the polls, would never give up power. And it came from the leader of a party that never contemplated losing in the first place.

The prompt concession speech by Ortega and the moderate tone of Chamorro’s statement were products of all-night negotiations among both candidates and former U.S. President Jimmy Carter and other prominent election observers, according to a Carter aide.

Speaking to reporters, Carter called the two speeches a “startling exhibition of reconciliation” that bodes well for “an orderly transfer of power” between now and Chamorro’s scheduled April 25 inauguration.

That sentiment was echoed by Cardinal Miguel Obando y Bravo, the country’s Roman Catholic primate and long a critic of the Sandinistas. Congratulating the government for its conduct of a free and fair vote, he urged both sides to “work with a spirit of serenity, remembering that we are all brothers.”

Violence erupted after dark, however, when about 80 Sandinista youths marched on Chamorro’s campaign headquarters during a victory celebration there and began throwing stones. UNO supporters rushed out to do battle, but riot police dispersed both sides with tear gas.

At the request of both candidates, Carter’s Council of Freely Elected Heads of Government, along with observer missions from the United Nations and Organization of American States that also monitored the vote, will remain in Nicaragua to oversee the transition.

The biggest potential obstacle to the incoming government is control of the military and security forces.

Government leaders suggested before the election that these forces would remain loyal to the Sandinista revolution regardless of the vote. Interior Minister Tomas Borge, who commands the security forces, once said that any attempt by a non-Sandinista government to dismantle those forces would make the country “ungovernable.”

The issue is tied closely to another that Chamorro must grapple with--how to persuade nearly 10,000 U.S.-backed Contras, who have been fighting the Sandinista army for eight years, to respect a regional peace treaty, lay down their arms and return to civilian life.

Voters leaving the polls Sunday said dissatisfaction with compulsory military service and the crumbling economy turned them against Sandinista rule. Many said they were glad to have a free choice after a lifetime of one-sided or rigged elections. About 85% of the 1.7 million registered voters turned out.

A Los Angeles Times survey of returns from a nationwide sample of polling places showed the Sandinistas winning only in one of Nicaragua’s nine regions: Esteli. They were rejected by a larger margin in rural areas than in the cities but ran virtually even in rural zones hit hardest by the civil war.

The survey gave no evidence that the Sandinistas did better among voters 16 to 24 years, who made up a third of the electorate and were supposedly one of their strongest constituencies.

Three hours after the polls closed, a similar but unpublished survey of 300 polling places by U.N. election monitors showed Chamorro winning by 56% to 40%.

At that point, Carter and the heads of the OAS and U.N. observer teams, Joao Baena Soares and former U.S. Atty. Gen. Elliot L. Richardson, suspected the electoral council of deliberately slowing the official count, according to Robert Pastor, a top aide to Carter. Pastor gave this account:

After three hours of futile efforts to find Ortega, the three men were invited by the Sandinista leader at midnight to his campaign headquarters, which was throbbing with music and dancing as supporters anticipated victory. An early Sandinista projection had shown Chamorro leading by six points, but Ortega still thought that margin was reversible.

“He was not yet prepared to admit defeat,” said Pastor, who attended the meeting. “I think the presence of Carter, Baena and Richardson all saying that the vote is over and you’ve lost and you have a unique opportunity to play the role of a great leader . . . all this eased his acceptance (of the result) and allowed Ortega to think of ways to prepare the population for what had occurred.”

Ortega agreed to speed up the official vote count if Chamorro promised not to claim victory before official returns were announced. The challenger delayed her speech until after 2 a.m., when the electoral council first announced she was leading. And, at the monitors’ suggestion, the first page of her text was toned down so that it asserted only that she was leading, not that she had won.

The observers also discussed with Ortega “a number of ideas they thought would be wise to put in (his) speech,” Pastor said. “He was looking for ways to assure that the immediate period would be as calm as possible. Inside the room we could feel the throbbing of the music and people screaming. I mean, the Sandinista supporters had no idea what was going on, and Ortega had to face that. How do you convince people who are so militant?”

Carter then telephoned U.S. Secretary of State James A. Baker III to tell him of the agreement and elicit a positive reaction from the Bush Administration.

When Ortega appeared in public a few hours later, he wore a dark paisley shirt and blue jeans, attire typical of his campaign appearances, rather than the military uniform he used to wear.

The Sandinista program, he told his supporters, was a giant stride for Nicaragua’s people, despite the election defeat. Many of them wept.

“Nicaragua was denied democracy, social and economic development, the right to speak out and organize, the right of campesinos to own land, the right of the poor to aspire to a better life,” he said.

“All this that was denied was achieved on July 19, 1979, with the triumph of the Sandinista National Liberation Front, which established the bases to develop an independent, dignified and sovereign Nicaragua with economic and social justice and with complete democracy.”