MANAGUA, Nicaragua (AP) - Sixteen years after his Sandinista revolution was defeated at the ballot box, Daniel Ortega is still trying to get his old job back. This time he even has a member of the Contras, once his worst enemy, as his running mate. And after another trademark peace-and-love campaign featuring his former guerrillas in pink and John Lennon's "Give Peace a Chance," he may just win.
Since he was voted out in'90, he has twice failed in similar campaigns to persuade Nicaraguans that his revolutionary past ended with the Cold War. Eager to move on from their civil war and fearful of a U.S.
backlash, they chose less polarizing figures. Now 61, Ortega is the front-runner in the Nov. 5 race in part because so many have lined up to beat him.
Polls give him about 30 per cent support, leading a field of five candidates that includes two dissident Sandinistas tired of his repeated presidential campaigns. Thanks to a constitutional change pushed by the Sandinistas in Congress six years ago, Ortega needs just 35 per cent of the vote and a five-point lead over his nearest rival to avoid a runoff where he might face tougher odds. Previously, candidates needed 45 per cent.
Former U.S. president Ronald Reagan branded Ortega's'80s government as a "totalitarian Marxist-Leninist dictatorship" that gave "the Soviet Union a beachhead on the mainland of this continent - only 2,000 miles (3,200 kilometres) from the Texas border, a clear national security threat.
" Even today, long after the collapse of the communist bloc, U.S. officials warn that Ortega represents Nicaragua's dark past, and that international aid could be denied to the second-poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere if he wins.
U.S. Ambassador Paul Trivelli has called Ortega's democratic credentials "very doubtful.
" Washington fears Ortega will team up with Hugo Chavez, its Latin American nemesis. The Venezuelan leader has openly backed Ortega, calling him a "brother" and sending low-cost fuel to ease Nicaragua's constant power outages. Ortega personally attended the arrival of the first diesel shipment and considers Chavez his friend, while denying Chavez is meddling in the Nicaraguan election.
Ortega's closest rival, the Harvard-educated banker Eduardo Montealegre, warns that Ortega will spread Chavez's populist politics across the region and "put an end to the advances that democracy and foreign investment have achieved." If Ortega wins a five-year term, it will be the second great comeback this year for a Latin American radical-turned-moderate. Leftist Alan Garcia regained the presidency of Peru promising not to repeat the mistakes of his'85-1990 presidency, which left his country mired in hyperinflation and guerrilla violence.
Garcia's opposition to Chavez earned him a White House visit this month and a promise from U.S. President George W.
Bush to safeguard a preferential trade deal. Like Garcia, Ortega claims to be a new man who would maintain relations with Washington and negotiate with the International Monetary Fund he once accused of perpetrating "savage capitalism." A Roman Catholic like 85 per cent of his five million countrymen, he also says he now opposes abortion.
Ortega is doing all he can to convince Nicaraguans he poses no danger to the country, where American surfers and retirees are snapping up Pacific beachfront real estate. His running mate, Jaime Morales, was the spokesman for the Contras when Washington organized and funded their civil war against the Sandinistas. Ortega even moved into Morales' six-bedroom estate after the rebels overthrew dictator Anastasio Somoza and seized many properties.
Ortega recently made up for that past by paying Morales an undisclosed amount for the estate, and the former rivals' smiling faces now blanket the capital, Managua, in pink-bordered signs promising reconciliation and unity. "If we can govern in time of war, imagine what we can do in time of peace," Ortega told a crowd in Managua. "Ortega is going to bring conflicts, blockades, hunger," said Jose Castillo, 39, a martial arts instructor sitting at a new mall in Managua.
"Nicaragua is already full of wounds." The Contra war killed about 50,000 people before it ended with Ortega agreeing to hold elections in'90. He lost to U.
S.-backed Violeta Chamorro, ending 11 years of Sandinista socialist rule, and has since lost two more elections. On a recent evening, Ortega, who rolled into Managua in'79 atop a tank, glided through the capital's poorest neighbourhoods in a Mercedes SUV.
From its sunroof, the moustachioed candidate waved to people who poured out of hundreds of shacks, yelling "Daniel!" Barefoot children, tattooed men and elderly women sloshed through sewage and trash as the caravan's speakers blasted his campaign message to the tune of John Lennon's "Give Peace a Chance." Ache Magana, 22, chased the Mercedes in a wheelchair over potholes.
"He's the only one who worries about the poor," he said. "Power is everything to him," says Carlos Mejia Godoy, 63, who belts out revolutionary ballads at his Managua bar. "Daniel Ortega has aligned himself with the country's darkest forces.
" Mejia Godoy is the running mate of Edmundo Jarquin on a dissident Sandinista ticket, but the Ortega campaign still uses songs he wrote for the Sandinista revolution. Another feature of Ortega's campaign is the Sandinista loyalists, some wearing pink shirts as they canvass for votes. Ortega lost some supporters after forming a power-sharing pact with conservative former president Arnoldo Aleman, whose Constitutionalist Liberal Party and the Sandinistas control Congress.
Aleman is under house arrest after being convicted for corruption during his'97-2002 rule. Washington has openly opposed the Aleman party's candidate, former vice president Jose Rizo. Also running is Eden Pastora, the legendary Sandinista fighter known as Comandante Zero.
He admits Ortega is tough to beat, and says the U.S. ambassador constant criticism of Ortega is helping the Sandinista leader in a country widely suspicious of meddling by outsiders.
"It looked at one point like the U.S. ambassador was Ortega's campaign manager," Pastora joked.
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