Sandinista revista

THE WILY DANIEL ORTEGA has made a comeback at last, snagging Nicaragua’s presidency by manipulating the election law -- to avoid a runoff even though he obtained less than 50% of the vote in last Sunday’s balloting -- with the help of an unlikely new ally, the Catholic Church. It’s a sad outcome for the Nicaraguan people.

The aging revolutionary probably won’t nationalize foreign assets, embroil his nation in a civil war or provoke the theatrical chaos that characterized Sandinista rule in the 1980s. But even with the oil wealth of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez behind him, Ortega is unlikely to alleviate the grinding poverty that drove a minority of Nicaraguans to give this authoritarian, scandal-plagued leftist a second chance.

Ortega’s victory comes as a blow to the Bush administration’s Latin America policy. Peru and Mexico dodged the hemispheric anti-U.S. current, but score one for Chavez in Nicaragua. Still, regardless of whatever emotional resonance Sandinismo holds among conservatives inside the Beltway, the White House would do well not to hold a grudge and to give Ortega a chance to prove he is more democratic these days.

No matter how many days’ drive Managua may be from the U.S. border, Nicaragua is no security threat to the United States.

Its 5.6 million people (half the population of Los Angeles) are the second poorest in the Western Hemisphere. (Only Haitians are worse off.) They are heavily dependent on foreign aid and remittances.

It wasn’t clever of the United States to have so openly backed Ortega’s conservative opponent, or to have threatened to cut off the $220 million in U.S. foreign aid if Ortega were elected. In a particularly absurd (and, come to think of it, Sandinista-like) move, Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Huntington Beach) and other congressmen had vowed that if Ortega won, they would seek to outlaw the transfer of remittances from Nicaraguans living in the U.S. to their relations at home.

Such threats only confirm Nicaraguans’ long-held resentments about U.S. interference in their domestic affairs.

The challenge now for the U.S. is to find ways to continue assisting economic development in Nicaragua, despite the return of an old nemesis to its presidency.