The past few weeks of news coverage have been dominated by the much anticipated midterm U.S. elections. But behind the scenes, another electoral process came and went -- a process that is sure to attract significant attention from the Bush administration and the newly elected Democratic congress.
Sandinista leader and long time foe of the Untied States Daniel Ortega was elected President of Nicaragua two weeks ago. The country's Supreme Electoral Council announced that Ortega is coming to power with 38 percent of the vote (Nicaragua's electoral rules require that a candidate receive only 35 percent of the vote to win in the first round as long as he is five percent ahead of the next candidate). Ortega returns to lead a country still plagued by abject poverty, economic instability and a politically polarized populace.
Despite recent improvements in overall GDP growth and a possible trend toward economic progress, the government of Enrique Bolanos, Ortega's predecessor, was largely unable to address the social needs of many Nicaraguans - 80 % of whom still live on less than $2 a day, according to a Population Reference Bureau (PRB) report.
With his return to power, Ortega has promised to support free trade, maintain good relations with Washington and promote private business with the goal of improving the quality of life for Nicaraguans. But only time will tell if Ortega's rhetoric matches his actions. If it does, we will be looking at a very different president from the one the world knew in the 1980s.
Regardless of the political and/or economic path Ortega chooses to pursue, the mere presence of the former guerilla leader in the Presidential Palace is sure to raise its fair share of eyebrows in Washington. Ortega's polemical history with the United States and his possible ties to Venezuela's leader Hugo Chavez may well be understood in the North as yet another step toward anti-United States, anti-democratic and anti-imperialistic "leftist" tendencies -- tendencies that are beginning to beg the question in Washington: Who lost Latin America, and how did it happen?
In the run up to the election, Ortega's mere candidacy solicited a series of negative responses from various factions within the United States. The Ambassador to Nicaragua, Paul Trivelli, frequently threatened Nicaragua with consequences if Ortega returned to power. Retired U.S. Marine Oliver North who covertly funded and trained Contra armies that fought against Ortega and the Sandinistas during the 1980s, returned to Nicaragua to campaign for an Ortega rival. A Californian Congresswoman, Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, delivered a
letter to the Secretary of Homeland Security that referred to an Ortega government as "pro-terrorist." And some observers even floated the idea of cutting off remittances to Nicaragua to help squeeze an Ortega government.
If these pre-election responses are any indication, we seem to be headed toward another unfortunate period of poor United States-Nicaragua relations -- one that will place the miniscule nation in the midst of another ideological struggle, dominated by a U.S. vision of worldwide "democratization" defined by its own terms.
If that happens, and if, as Washington has threatened, the United States decides to suspend economic aid to the second poorest country in Latin America, the losers will be Nicaragua's poor. Sour United States-Nicaragua relations will threaten not only U.S. aid withdrawal from the country, but also Nicaragua's nascent favorable investment climate -- an essential part of attacking Nicaragua's poverty problems.
Since the election, the official U.S. reaction has been measured. The State Department publicly stated that the United States would support any government Nicaragua elected, and after speaking with former President Jimmy Carter, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice promised that the United States would respond "favorably" to the Ortega government. Much like Ortega's promises, however, only time will tell if U.S. actions will support their claims.
Daniel Ortega, unfortunately, is probably not what Nicaragua needed. His extensive political baggage, corrupt agreements with other powerful Nicaraguan politicians and opportunistic political maneuvering leave a lot to be desired. What type of policies Ortega pursues will largely determine whether the social improvements the Sandinista leader promised in his election campaign really constitute tangible steps toward poverty reduction, or are simply ways of ensuring that he retains his political base of support.
Regardless of his decisions, however, the United States (one of Nicaragua's largest economic partners and still a dominant power in Central America) will have a lot to do with the plight or prosperity of Nicaragua's poor during the next six years.
Ortega's ability to improve the standard of living of his citizens will depend, in part, on whether or not the United States can drop the resurgent Cold War attitude that characterized its pre-Nicaraguan election commentary, and realize, once and for all, that the Cold War is over.
The resurgence of a Latin American left is not a conspiracy to destroy the "free" way of life, and never has been. Today's leftist swing is a response to the continued immobility of many Latin American poor. It exists because, despite its claims, the neo-liberal economic model and the Latin American right have largely failed to improve the quality of life of many of their constituents. Understood in this context, the United States should be careful not to overreact to the Sandinista leader and risk promoting an anti-imperial attitude that partly fueled Ortega's return to power.
If the United States really wants to promote democracy in Latin America and Nicaragua, it should start by recognizing that Ortega is a legitimate president elected freely and fairly by his people, while simultaneously critiquing the parts of Ortega's political machine that have undemocratic characteristics. These critiques should go hand in hand with a real U.S. effort to end poverty in Nicaragua with Ortega, and not in opposition to him. This is perhaps the only way that Nicaragua's poor have a chance at breaking out of the vicious poverty cycle that plagues their country.
The nature of democracy is not its predictability. Whether or not we agree with whom it places in power, we need to realize that accepting democracy means accepting its unwanted consequences.
And that means, for better or worse, putting the 1980s Daniel Ortega behind us. It means, as Nicaraguans have done, giving him another chance. This time around, Washington's revenues and taxpayers' money will be much better served by building schools, health clinics and businesses in Nicaragua, rather than training militaries and funding opposition groups.
Matt MacGregor is a first-year student at the Fletcher School studying international development. He attended a conference last month entitled, "La Nicaragua Posible: The Possible Nicaragua" with a group of Tufts students. The conference was organized jointly by the President's Office of Nicaragua and the Project on Justice in Times of Transition.
