Sandinista Loss Is Democracy’s Gain, Latins Say

Latin American democracies Monday embraced Violeta Barrios de Chamorro’s stunning upset victory in Nicaragua as proof of an anti-totalitarian groundswell in the region.

Chamorro’s victory “enormously fortified democracy in the region, and we can foresee a promising future for her country and for definitive peace,” President Carlos Saul Menem of Argentina said in a statement in Buenos Aires.

El Salvador, a close U.S. ally, also expressed satisfaction at Chamorro’s victory and said it might help peace prospects in El Salvador. The Salvadoran government has accused Nicaragua, under the defeated leftist Sandinista regime, of aiding leftist rebels in El Salvador.

But government spokesman Mauricio Sandoval also spoke admiringly of the “political maturity” of defeated President Daniel Ortega in acknowledging his election loss.

In Chile, Gutenberg Martinez, secretary general of President-elect Patricio Aylwin’s Christian Democratic Party, said he is “satisfied . . . that the reconstruction of the democratic system in Latin America continues to march on.”

“Cuba is now the only American nation outside the democratic system,” Martinez said, calling it “an island that tarnishes the hemisphere’s image of liberty and democracy.”

Chile will emerge from more than 16 years of military dictatorship when Aylwin is inaugurated March 11.

Costa Rica’s foreign minister, Rodrigo Madrigal Nieto, said Chamorro’s victory “filled me with joy” and that it completes the establishment of democracy in Central America.

In Panama, Vice President Guillermo Ford said: “God bless Violeta.” Ford was an opposition candidate in elections last May that were annulled by Gen. Manuel A. Noriega, later deposed in a U.S. invasion.

The Cuban state media, which had been predicting a near-certain win for Ortega, reported without comment that the U.S.-backed Chamorro appeared headed for victory. Communist Cuba has been a major supporter of the leftist Sandinista government.

Elsewhere in the world, U.N. Secretary General Javier Perez de Cuellar praised the vote as a major step toward Central American peace.

Ortega’s government “deserves warm commendations for having convened these elections ahead of schedule, having submitted to the test of the people’s will and accepting the verdict of the ballot box,” he said in a statement.

British Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd said: “This is good news for Nicaragua, for Latin America, for everybody.”

In Norway, generally sympathetic to the Sandinistas, Foreign Minister Kjell Magne Bondevik said: “It is now decisive that the result of the vote is also followed and respected . . . something I believe will happen.”