Excerpts of Ortega’s Remarks on Election Loss

The following are excerpts, translated by the Associated Press, from the address delivered Monday by Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega.

Many have been the battles waged by our people--heroic, abnegated, industrious and self-sacrificing.

Interpreting the Nicaraguan people’s desire for peace, and defending our own revolutionary project--multi-party with a mixed economy and unaligned--we were able to preserve that project even in the most difficult times of struggle against U.S. intervention and the internal polarization provoked by that struggle.

We entered these elections convinced that this battle in the electoral realm would determine once and for all the end of the war and a time of peace for the Nicaraguan people.

The Sandinista Front, as a historic political force, alongside the patriotic and responsible people of Nicaragua, has confronted in these elections U.S. policy, the Contras, the (U.S.) economic embargo, the economic decline provoked by the war--with its trust placed in the people.

I want to express to all Nicaraguans and the people of the world, that the president of Nicaragua, the government, will respect and submit itself to the popular mandate that arose from the vote in these elections.

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

Would that this sun rising this 26th of February illuminate the path toward the consolidation of democracy, of a mixed economy, of a free Nicaragua independent and democratic, in peace, not interfered with by any foreign power, in which all Nicaraguans would be able to demonstrate to the world that we can make

these dreams and hopes come true.

The greatest victory upon which I pride myself as president of Nicaragua, as a Sandinista leader, and of which we, all Sandinista militants, should all feel proud, is that this 26th of February we are opening a new road for Nicaragua like the one we opened July 19, 1979.

But now this is a road on which the war and the Contras must disappear, on which national interests prevail over interventionist policies. We the Sandinistas are giving to Nicaragua that democracy and that peace, and working for stability and for a better future.

Today more than ever I invite you that we act with firmness, conviction and certainty that the steps we have taken have been correct steps, in accord with our proposals. If we have accepted so much sacrifice, so much work, in these years, once again we Sandinistas emerge victorious, once more we emerge the victors, because we were able to turn our words into deeds.

We leave victorious. Because we Sandinistas have sacrificed, have spilled blood and sweat, not to cling to government posts, but to bring to Nicaragua something denied it since 1821, when it became an independent nation.

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.

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 development and with complete democracy.

We are proud, despite the final election results, to be providing to Nicaragua and the peoples of Central America and Latin America and the Caribbean, to the developing nations, to this unjust world divided between the powerful and the weak--proud to be providing a little dignity, a little democracy, a little social justice, from this small territory in Central America that gave birth to men who made Nicaragua shine in the world . . . .

Thank you brothers and sisters, and onward with our combat cry, which was the cry of Sandino: ‘Free fatherland, or death.’