Two Extremes Vie for Power in Nicaragua

Nicaraguans frustrated by unemployment and poverty under a president dedicated to national reconciliation waited in long lines Sunday to choose her successor in a contest between two extremes: a right-wing populist and the former ruler who led this country’s Marxist revolution during the 1970s and ‘80s.

Former President Daniel Ortega and his opponent, former Managua Mayor Arnoldo Aleman, have tried to present themselves as moderates in an effort to win votes and calm fears.

They are the clear leaders in a field of 23 candidates, and the most likely to be left in a two-way runoff election that will be held if no candidate wins 45% of the vote.

Nevertheless, this election shows how polarized Nicaragua remains more than six years after Ortega’s Sandinista National Liberation Front lost power to a government that promised to heal the wounds of a bitter civil war financed in part by the United States.

“We voted for democracy in 1990,” said Lucia Roman, who at that time helped elect the reconciliation government of President Violeta Barrios de Chamorro. But Sunday, the 33-year-old office clerk and mother of three cast her ballot in the farming town of Jinotepe for Aleman, explaining: “Now we have to vote to change this country.”

Corruption and unemployment have battered this nation, Roman said. Her brothers fled Nicaragua to avoid the draft under Ortega and remain in Canada, leaving the family divided.

“We are struggling to eliminate the last Sandinista” as a political force, she said.

Such rhetoric has created a fear of revenge against Sandinistas that persuaded Jose, a 21-year-old farm worker in nearby San Marcos, that he should vote for Ortega.

“The past six years have been bad for us,” said Jose, who asked that his last name not be given. He earns $9 a week--when he can find work--to support a 9-month-old daughter. “Only the Sandinistas care about the poor.”

Worried that such deep political divisions could spill over into violence, police and soldiers were standing by.

“We will remain on alert as long as it takes for voters to accept the election results,” said Rene Ortega, police chief in the city of Masaya, about 20 miles southeast of the capital.

Calm continued as voters overcame delays and poor organization to cast ballots in an election that includes candidates from two dozen parties on six different ballots covering about 2,000 local, provincial, national and regional offices.

Many precincts opened hours after the scheduled 7 a.m. starting time.

Voters waited patiently to cast their ballots in impoverished neighborhoods such as Ciudad Sandino, on the outskirts of the capital.

Jose Domingo Flores, 46, said he voted there in 1990 for Chamorro’s coalition “because I didn’t want war anymore.”

However, he said, that government “did nothing for the poor.”

On Sunday, he was back and voting for Ortega “to see if we can get enough to eat.”

Maribel Jimenez journeyed to her hometown of Masaya from Costa Rica, where she lives, to vote for Aleman.

“He is the only one who can inspire the confidence of investors to create jobs here so that Nicaraguans will not have to go work in other countries,” she said.

Before she voted, the manager of a craft shop said, “I went to church to pray that the people will not make the same mistake again and vote for the Sandinistas.”