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http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/americas/11/07/nicaragua.elections.ap/index.html
POSTED: 9:35 a.m. EST, November 7, 2006
U.S. wary as Ortega appears headed for victory
MANAGUA, Nicaragua (AP) -- Daniel Ortega insists he has changed from the days when he was a Marxist fighting a U.S.-backed insurgency. The balding, 60-year-old former Nicaraguan president has toned down his fiery rhetoric and is even promising to keep good relations with the White House.
Even though Ortega looked set Tuesday to regain the country's top office with a commanding lead over four challengers, he refrained from declaring victory before the official announcement.
"No one wins until the electoral council says so," Ortega said after meeting former President Carter, who served as an observer of Sunday's election.
Washington has made it clear it isn't thrilled at the prospect of its Cold War foe returning to power. But in an interview released by the State Department Monday, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said the United States would respect the decision of the Nicaraguan people and see what policies the next government follows before making decisions about future relations.
With more than 60 percent of the vote counted, the Sandinista leader had 39 percent, an eight-point lead over wealthy banker Eduardo Montealegre. Three other challengers were trailing, and former Contra rebel Eden Pastora bowed out after results showed him in last place.
If his comeback is confirmed, Ortega would join a growing number of left-leaning Latin American rulers.
"This is good for the people of Nicaragua and for the integration of Latin America," Cuban Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque told The Associated Press on Monday.
Ortega's supporters celebrated in the streets, with caravans of hundreds of cars filing into the capital, honking, waving party flags and blasting the Sandinista campaign song, set to the tune of John Lennon's "Give Peace a Chance."
Many Nicaraguans worry Ortega's return to power will drive away the country's business leaders and elite, as did his first time in power in 1985.
"We're just trying to figure out which country to go to," said Karen Sandoval, a 27-year-old Coca-Cola marketer shopping with a friend at an upscale Managua mall. "This sets the country back 20 years."
But Herberto Jose Lopez, who earns about $235 a month selling CDs from a kiosk, said he voted for Ortega in hopes that he would help Nicaragua's poor.
"I've got a wife and kid and I'm lucky because I have a job, but most people will tell you the same thing: The current administration just governs for the guys in ties," said the 32-year-old Lopez.
Ortega says he has changed profoundly since he befriended Soviet leaders, expropriated land and fought the U.S.-backed Contra rebels in a war that left 30,000 dead and the economy in shambles. He toned down his once fiery rhetoric during the campaign, promising to support the Central American Free Trade Agreement and even maintain good relations with Washington.
Today he often appears more preacher than revolutionary, calling for peace and reconciliation and urging his supporters to pray.
An Ortega victory would cap a 16-year quest to return to his old job. Ortega lost the presidency in 1990, ending Sandinista rule and the Contra war. He has run for president in every election since.
Ortega's vote percentage was similar to what he received in his last two failed presidential bids, but the right was divided this time between Montealegre and ruling party candidate Jose Rizo. The constitution allowed him to win on the first round with only 35 percent of the vote and a lead of five percentage points over his closest rival.
Electoral observers have said the vote was mostly peaceful and orderly, despite long lines and angry confrontations by people who said polling stations closed before they could vote. Observers from the Organization of American States said 2 percent of potential voters weren't able to cast a ballot, and they estimated turnout around 70 percent.
The race generated intense international interest, including a visit by Oliver North, the former White House aide at the heart of the Iran-Contra controversy, which created a huge scandal when it emerged that Washington secretly sold arms to Iran and used the money to arm the Contras.
These days, U.S. money is flowing to Nicaragua in the form of investments by foreign companies drawn by the country's cheap labor, low crime rates and recent decision to join the Central American Free Trade Agreement.
Nicaraguan presidents cannot serve consecutive terms, and President Enrique Bolanos steps down January 10.
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http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/1108/p06s01-woam.html
From the November 08, 2006 edition
Ortega appears set for Nicaragua's presidency
With results in from over 60 percent of polling stations, the former revolutionary has 38.6 percent of the vote.
By Sara Miller Llana | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
• Ms. Llana is Latin America correspondent for the Monitor and USA Today.
Managua, Nicaragua -- Sixteen years after falling from power, Daniel Ortega, the former Marxist revolutionary who battled US-backed rebel forces in Nicaragua throughout the 1980s, appeared to emerge victorious in Sunday's presidential election, according to preliminary results and quick counts by two of the country's respected observer groups.
With official results in from more than 60 percent of polling stations, Mr. Ortega has 38.6 percent of the vote. He needs to win at least 35 percent and hold a lead of 5 points to avoid a December runoff election. Eduardo Montealegre, a Harvard-educated conservative backed by Washington, trails him by 8 percentage points.
The win would deal a blow to the US, which has been keeping a close eye on their old cold war foe. US politicians warned that US aid and investment would wane in this Central American country - one of the hemisphere's poorest - if Ortega, an ally of Venezuela's president Hugo Chávez, retook the helm of Nicaragua.
It would be a remarkable win for Ortega, who had lost three consecutive bids for the presidency and has, over the years, made just as many enemies in Nicaragua as in Washington. The two leading conservative candidates splintered the vote - boosting Ortega's chances to acquire enough support to avoid a runoff, which most analysts say he would lose.
But Ortega has also drawn many voters who say that 16 years of conservative, Washington-backed administrations here have left them poorer than they were. Many say they have put the war behind them and believe Ortega when he says he has evolved into the only candidate who can bring the nation together.
"The split between the conservatives is fundamental to the outcome," says Wilmar Cuarezma, who studies Nicaragua's governability at the nonprofit Institute for Nicaraguan Studies in Managua. "But most important is people feel that the conservatives abandoned the poor, that poverty has increased. Public services have gotten too expensive and are not accessible to most of the people anymore."
This sentiment mirrors a leftward trend in the region, where voters in Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, and elsewhere have demonstrated their fatigue with conservative policies.
"Countries are choosing a national capitalism," says Oscar-Rene Vargas, a political analyst in Managua who supports Ortega.
Image makeover
Campaign ads by Ortega's opponents depicted him in army fatigues, a reminder of the war that wreaked havoc on Nicaragua throughout the '80s. But Ortega fashioned an image makeover, touting reconciliation and solidarity. On the campaign trail, he often said the war was buried forever. He spoke often of God, said the country needed a spiritual revolution, and even adopted John Lennon's "Give Peace a Chance" as his theme song.
Apparently, the new Ortega resonated with voters. Ilario López, a retired city worker, voted for conservative candidates throughout the '90s because he says he felt they would improve the country's economy. But he has been disappointed. "I am willing to give him [Ortega] another chance," says Mr. López. "If we don't have work, we don't have money, and we all suffer. He is not a guerrilla; he is our only hope to live in peace."
Sunday night and Monday, Ortega supporters took to the streets, setting off celebratory fireworks and waving black-and-red flags of the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN), from the backs of pickup trucks.
Analysts say that Ortega would have a difficult run in a second round, since the vote between the two conservative candidates was split. Indeed many of those voting for Mr. Montealegre or José Rizo, the other conservative, who is currently in third place with 22.93 percent, say they felt more strongly about Ortega losing than their own candidate of choice winning.
"I wouldn't mind if this went into a second round, because it would mean Ortega wouldn't win," says Manuel Cabrera, an accountant in Managua who cast his ballot for runner-up Montealegre. "The US has helped us a lot, and we are going to continue needing their economic assistance. I'm afraid an Ortega victory will ruin those relationships. He will care more about Venezuela and Cuba, and not our friends who have helped us."
Crying foul
The race saw a huge voter turnout, at over 70 percent. But Montealegre said the celebrations were premature. "No one has won here," he said as initial results trickled in. "The Nicaraguan people, in a runoff, will determine the next president."
The US Embassy released a statement saying it was too soon to "make an overall judgment on the fairness and transparency of the process," it read. "We are receiving reports of some anomalies in the electoral process."
Some here say the election was unfair at the outset because Ortega helped to lower the threshold for victory from 45 to 35 percent, with a five-point difference between the two leading candidates. He pushed through electoral-law changes with former president Arnoldo Alemán, who is now serving a 20-year sentence for embezzlement. "That can only happen in a country run by two gangsters," says Otto Reich, who was a senior official in the Reagan administration when it backed the Contra rebels against Ortega. "Ortega was willing to throw his country to the wolves" in order to win the presidency.
The US was not shy about voicing its dissatisfaction with an Ortega win, saying that aid and investment were likely to wane if he were in power. Some here now wonder whether US threats to block remittances or rethink free-trade agreements backfired.
"For Washington, it's clear that a lot of bravado and warnings did not really pay off," says Michael Shifter, vice president for policy at the Inter-American Dialogue in Washington. If Ortega does emerge victorious, he says that "there is a lot of uncertainty about what direction he'll take. He is clearly an ally of Chávez, but what does that mean being the president of Nicaragua?"
Mr. Chávez sent fertilizer and cheap fuel to Nicaragua ahead of the election in what many claimed was a bid to bring voters into Ortega's fold, especially since Nicaragua has suffered an energy crisis in part because of the high cost of oil.
Ortega has promised to work with business leaders and has backed a trade deal with the US. He stopped short of claiming victory Monday night but said that, whoever wins, he's ready to work with other parties to "eradicate poverty and reassure the private sector and international investors."
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http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2006/11/07/MNG45M7FPE1.DTL&type=politics
Tuesday, November 7, 2006
Sandinista Ortega near a comeback in Nicaragua
Indira A.R. Lakshmanan, Boston Globe
(11-07) 04:00 PST Managua, Nicaragua -- Sixteen years after he was ousted by voters weary of war, rationing and a devastated economy, Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega has won a chance to redeem himself.
From landless peasants to leftist teachers and former government servants, Nicaraguans fed up with the inability of the last three center-right governments to improve life for the have-nots decided to give Ortega a second chance.
Electoral officials had yet to release final results from Sunday's presidential vote, but preliminary results and two of the country's top electoral watchdog groups all gave Ortega about 40 percent of the vote. That would be enough for him to earn a first-round victory and avoid a runoff. International observers, including former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, called the balloting free and fair.
Harvard-educated banker Eduardo Montealegre trailed Ortega by at least seven percentage points. Former Contra rebel and last-place presidential candidate Eden Pastora admitted defeat Monday. But Montealegre and two other candidates refused to recognize Ortega's victory, saying they would wait until all the votes had been counted. The United States, which has threatened to pull aid from an Ortega government, also said it was too soon to declare the Sandinista leader a winner.
"This isn't over until the last vote has been counted," Montealegre said.
The presumed victory of the former Marxist comandante, who pitched himself as a born-again social democrat in the campaign, is part of a trend in recent elections across Latin America. Leftists from Peru to Bolivia to Argentina have capitalized on the failure of conservative governments of the last two decades to use government and private investment to provide health, education and jobs for all.
The electoral comeback of the man who was Washington's nemesis during the U.S.-backed Contra war in the 1980s could further strain U.S. relations with an array of governments that have allied themselves with populist President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, who delights in baiting President Bush.
Hundreds of cars and buses packed with loyalists waving the red and black Sandinista flag, honking and cheering, crowded the streets of the capital Monday afternoon, heading for a celebration in the central commercial district. Men on horseback and children on bicycles joined the throng.
A divided opposition and a new law lowering the vote share needed to win from 45 percent to 40 percent paved the way for Ortega's victory. An undeniably divisive figure, Ortega, 60, is despised and distrusted by many among the 60 percent who voted for his four opponents.
But this election became a referendum on the last 16 years of free-market policies. Privatizations and pro-investment policies have yielded mediocre growth, heavy taxation of the poor and a drop in real salaries, according to official statistics.
"The victory of the Sandinistas means the victory of the poor -- finally they will be heard in Congress, by the president and in the ministries," said a jubilant Jorge Alberto Gsmez Delgado, a small-businessman and former Sandinista army captain who was celebrating in the streets.
In La Paz Centro, a traditionally conservative farming community in southwestern Nicaragua, desperation over deteriorating living conditions gave Ortega a boost among poor peasants. Many said they never dreamed they would vote for the Sandinistas after the hyperinflation and scarcity of food and other essentials they suffered under their last government.
"We've had three governments since the 1980s, and they haven't done a thing for the poor," said Marma Josi Galleano Rumz, who sells potato chips and beans, earning less than $1 a day, and does not own the crumbling shack she lives in.
Galleano, whose family sided with the anti-Sandinista Contras and historically voted for the center-right party that won the last two elections, said she was willing to take a chance on Ortega this time because no one else had provided basic medicine and education to the poor.
One million Nicaraguan youngsters in a country of 5.6 million people are not enrolled in school, because they cannot afford fees, uniforms or materials or because they must work to support their families, according to Education Ministry figures.
The decline in health spending since 1990 has also been dramatic. The Sandinistas spent an average of $30 per person per year on health while holding power from 1979 to 1990, more than twice the $13 being spent by the current government, according to a World Bank-commissioned study.
The Sandinistas managed to eradicate diseases such as dengue fever and measles, but many have since returned, along with a surge in maladies associated with malnutrition, said Cirilo Otero Escorcia of the Center for Environmental Policy Initiatives, a think tank in Managua.
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http://www.plenglish.com/article.asp?ID=%7B4CDC43C1-C872-417E-8F7A-19EAB8778F83%7D)&language=EN
Tuesday, November 07, 2006
Opponent Declares Ortega Victor
Managua, Nov 7 (Prensa Latina) Former guerrilla fighter Eden Pastora, fielded by the Alternative for Change in the November 5 vote in Nicaragua, exhorted other losing candidates on Tuesday to recognize the triumph of Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega.
At a morning TV program, Pastora said this is the moment to demonstrate if they are truly democrats. The rest of the candidates said they will wait for the final result to admit their defeat.
With nearly 62 percent of the polling stations counted, the Sandinista National Liberation Front leader holds more than 7-points over his closest rival, which makes him the virtual president-elect. All forecasts coincide that such tendency will remain until the upshot to be announced today.
In Nicaragua a contender can be elected president with 40 percent of the valid votes or with 35 percent, but in this case the electoral law says that the winner must have five points over the runner-up.
Besides Ortega and Pastora , who did not get one percent of the votes, Eduardo Montealegre, from the Nicaraguan Liberal Alliance, Jose Rizo, of the Constitutionalist Liberal Party, and Edmundo Jarquin, fielded by the Sandinista Renovator Movement also took part in Sunday’s Presidential elections.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/07/world/americas/07nicaragua.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
November 7, 2006
Leftist Headed Toward Victory in Nicaragua
By JAMES C. McKINLEY Jr. and JILL REPLOGLE
MANAGUA, Nicaragua, Nov. 6 — Sixteen years after he left power, Daniel Ortega, a former Marxist president and the Sandinista leader who is still regarded as a sworn foe by many in Washington, appeared headed to a victory on Monday in the Nicaraguan presidential election.
Though electoral officials had yet to release final tallies from Sunday’s vote, preliminary results and the country’s electoral watchdog groups all indicated that Mr. Ortega, who had failed three times before to gain the presidency in elections, would win a clear victory.
An Ortega win in a five-way race would be a defeat for the Bush administration, which strongly opposed his election and worked hard to unite a fractious opposition against him with little success. The White House has said it would withdraw aid from an Ortega government.
With about 61 percent of the vote counted, Mr. Ortega had 38.6 percent of the ballots, about 8 points ahead of the second-place candidate, Eduardo Montealegre, a Harvard-educated financier and conservative Washington has openly supported. Final results were not expected until Tuesday, an election official said.
Now 60 years old and balding, Mr. Ortega has maintained he is no longer a Marxist, but more of a pragmatist. He has promised to keep good relations with the United States and chose a former political opponent as his running mate. He has also vowed to help the poor and run a positive campaign around the themes of “peace, love and unity.”
But he maintains close ties to Cuba and to Hugo Chávez of Venezuela, the leftist president who has become a thorn in the side of the United States. Mr. Chávez gave the Ortega campaign significant support by sending subsidized oil to Nicaragua and distributing it through Sandinista politicians.
Mr. Ortega’s expected victory appeared to be another gain for leftists in Latin America, who, despite recent setbacks in Peru and Mexico, have also persuaded voters to abandon conservative governments in Brazil, Argentina, Chile and Bolivia.
Although the results were preliminary, supporters of the Sandinista National Liberation Front party of Mr. Ortega set off fireworks around the city on Monday, and drove around honking horns, shouting victory slogans and waving red and black Sandinista flags. Mr. Ortega had yet to make a statement.
Cuba immediately congratulated Mr. Ortega. “This is good for the people of Nicaragua and for the integration of Latin America,” Foreign Minister Felipe Pérez Roque told The Associated Press on Monday.
Mr. Ortega’s opponents refused to recognize his expected victory until all the votes were counted. The United States took a similar stance. The State Department’s deputy spokesman, Tom Casey, said Monday that the administration would wait to comment until the Nicaraguan electoral council announced who won. He also said it was too early to comment on procedural problems during the voting, noting that several groups of observers planned to file reports.
Mr. Casey said the United States delegation in Nicaragua had remarked on “high turnout and given praise to the Nicaraguan people for their patience and their willingness to show support for this democratic process.”
Mr. Ortega was one of the leaders of the Sandinista rebels that swept to power in 1979, toppling the Somoza dynasty of right-wing dictators friendly to the United States and setting up an authoritarian left-wing government.
With the cold war still driving United States policy, President Reagan imposed sanctions on the country and financed anti-Sandinista guerrillas, known as contras, in part by secretly selling arms to the revolutionary Islamic government in Iran. It was Mr. Ortega who led his Soviet-backed government in a bloody decade-long civil war.
The last time Mr. Ortega ran Nicaragua, he seized private assets and redistributed land to peasants. Capital fled the country, along with many of its business leaders. He vows a different approach this time.
The advertising campaign against the former rebel leader was vicious, showing images from the civil war, women weeping, guns blaring. His opponents lost no chance to remind people of the economic collapse that followed the fighting and the United States embargo.
Mr. Ortega was elected president in 1984 and served from 1985 to 1990, before losing to Violeta Chamorro. He struggled to regain power through the ballot box, but without success, in 1996 and 2001.
This time, however, a change in the election law and a strong throw-the-bums-out sentiment in the country after campaign financing scandals involving President Enrique Bolaños helped carry him to what appears to be a victory.
He was also aided significantly by a change in election rules that allows a candidate to win in the first round with only 35 percent of the vote, so long as he is 5 points above his closest opponent. If Mr. Ortega had not won on the first round, most political strategists predicted he would not have survived a second round, as the splintered anti-Sandinista vote would have united.
As it was, the anti-Sandinista vote seemed split mostly between Mr. Montealegre, with 30.9 percent, and José Rizo, the candidate of the conservative ruling party, who had 22.9 percent, according to the Supreme Electoral Council, the Nicaraguan election authority. Two other candidates, Edmundo Jarquín, a dissident former Sandinista, and Edén Pastora, a former Sandinista who later became a contra rebel, trailed behind.
Results of a quick count carried out by a local monitoring group, Ethics and Transparency, tracked with the official results.
“It’s been a pretty exact count, we can say that Ortega’s triumph is almost sure,” said Carlos Tunnerman, a political analyst and former Nicaraguan ambassador to Washington from 1984 to 1988.
Former President Jimmy Carter, who was in Nicaragua to monitor the election, said the quick count was “among the most definitive I have ever seen.” The count is based on a large, and strategically varied, sample of votes from urban and rural areas and different social strata, explained Mr. Carter and local analysts.
On Sunday night, following the first presentation of results by the election authorities, Mr. Montealegre denounced the early closing of some polling places and problems with the delivery of voter identification cards. He said he would not concede defeat until all votes were counted.
Mr. Carter agreed that there were minor problems with the voting process, but said he did not think they were significant enough to affect the results.
“The likelihood is that those few anomalies, which exist in every election in the world, will not be substantive enough collectively to change the apparent results of this election,” Mr. Carter said.
Electoral observers have said the vote was mostly peaceful and orderly, despite long lines and some angry confrontations among voters who claimed polling stations closed before they could vote.
Observers from the Organization of American States said 2 percent of potential voters were not able to cast ballots, and they estimated turnout around 70 percent, The A.P. reported.
Because the front-runner was a cold-war icon for the left, the race generated interest in the United States. Even Oliver North, a former White House aide to President Reagan, visited to speak against Mr. Ortega. Mr. North was at the heart of what became known as the Iran-contra affair.
But in recent years, American money has flowed into Nicaragua in the form of investments. The country has cheap labor and low crime rates, and recently joined the Central American Free Trade Agreement.
During his campaign, Mr. Ortega emphasized his goal of peace and reconciliation, choosing bright pink as the color for his campaign and adopting the rhythm of John Lennon’s “Give Peace a Chance” for his jingle.
For some, Mr. Ortega and the Sandinistas still conjure up memories of the war and tough economic times. Marlon José Sánchez Padilla, 36, who sold oranges on Sunday outside of a polling station in the town of Nindirí, bitterly recalled his two years of military service in the 1980s. “Many people were mutilated,” he said. “Now he promises the sky, earth and highways, but we don’t believe him anymore.”
Others at the polls on Sunday said it was time to give Mr. Ortega another chance. “It seems that Daniel Ortega has asked for pardon,” said Ninosca Leets, 46, a housewife who said she fled to the United States during the former Sandinista government. “He’s asked for reconciliation. He’s asked for a change, and I think he should be given the opportunity.”
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http://www.cadenagramonte.cubaweb.cu/english/news/november_06/061106_01.asp
Monday, November 6, 2006
Independent group says Sandinista candidate Daniel Ortega won
Managua, Nov 6.- Nicaragua's independent organization "Etica y Transparencia" has granted the electoral win in the first round to Sandinista candidate Daniel Ortega, based on results of a quick counting held parallel to the official one.
The organization, which yesterday positioned 13,000 electoral observers at polling sites nationwide, affirmed today Ortega had 38.49 percent of votes, thus guaranteeing his victory in the first round.
The candidate of the ALN (Nicaraguan Liberal Alliance), Eduardo Montealegre, was second with 29.52 percent, and Jose Rizo, from the PLC (Liberal Constitutionalist Party) was third, with 24.15 percent.
The spokesman of "Etica y Transparencia," Pablo Ayon, commented they understand some candidates may have doubts, but their results will not be affected by irregularities. (PL)
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/06/AR2006110600506.html
Tuesday, November 7, 2006; A01
Ortega Set To Reclaim Nicaraguan Presidency
By N.C. Aizenman / Washington Post Foreign Service
MANAGUA, Nicaragua, Nov. 6 -- Daniel Ortega, the former Marxist president and nemesis of President Ronald Reagan, appears to have won back Nicaragua's top job.
With 62 percent of precincts reporting, Ortega was comfortably leading the field of five presidential contenders with 39 percent of the vote, virtually ensuring him a first-round win under Nicaragua's electoral rules.
In a public appearance Monday night, Ortega, 60, declined to declare victory until the full count was in. "We are ready to work together [with the other candidates] to eradicate the poverty of Nicaragua, to provide security to the private sector, to provide security to the diverse foreigners in our country . . . and to develop relations with the entire international community," Ortega said, as his wife and campaign manager, Rosario Murillo, stood grinning by his side.
If the results from Sunday's vote hold, they will mark a stunning comeback for the Cold War icon, who has failed twice to regain power since 1990, when voters disillusioned by a decade-long war with U.S.-backed insurgents and government abuses cast his Sandinista National Liberation Front from office.
Ortega's return to Nicaragua's presidency would also constitute an embarrassing setback for the Bush administration. American officials have recently made thinly veiled threats that the United States would impose economic sanctions and other punitive measures if Ortega was reelected, arguing that Ortega has not changed despite his embrace of Catholicism, pronouncements in favor of a market economy and efforts to cast himself as the candidate of "reconciliation."
U.S. officials appeared motivated in part by concerns that Ortega would be an eager partner in pushing an anti-American alliance with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. Ortega's return is particularly galling to many in the Bush administration who devoted their careers to getting rid of him in the 1980s.
Longtime political analysts in Managua said that Ortega was too pragmatic to attempt to resurrect controversial policies implemented during his 1979-90 government that drew international condemnation -- such as military conscription, confiscation of some private property and press censorship.
"Ortega is not going to be stupid and commit the mistakes of the past," said Emilio Alvarez, an analyst and critic of the Sandinistas. "He knows that the Soviet parachute is gone and that he is totally dependent on the assistance of the United States, the International Monetary Fund and foreign investment."
Instead, Alvarez predicted that Ortega would try to reach out to Nicaragua's impoverished populace with more modest measures, such as raising taxes to pay for salary increases for low-level government workers and for increased spending on education.
Still Alvarez worried that Ortega "is erratic. He has these messianic dreams of being the savior of the people that make him vulnerable to unworkable economic schemes."
During the campaign, Ortega caused alarm in the business community by suggesting that he wanted to compel banks to lower the fees they charge Nicaraguans living overseas to wire money to relatives back home.
Carlos Chamorro, editor of the respected weekly newsmagazine Confidencial who broke with the Sandinistas a decade ago, agreed. "Nobody thinks the country is going to go belly up with Ortega," said Chamorro, whose mother, Violeta Chamorro, defeated Ortega in the 1990 elections. "But he represents a step backwards because he could bring economic uncertainty and slow the process of investment and job creation."
Ortega's supporters, including many underemployed youths too young to remember the years of Sandinista rule, are convinced that he is the only candidate who empathizes with their plight. As word of his early lead filtered out, they poured into Managua's streets, setting off firecrackers and cheering ecstatically.
Ortega's closest rivals, meanwhile, held news conferences Monday to announce that they were not yet ready to accept defeat.
"This is not over until the last vote is counted," said Eduardo Montealegre of the Nicaraguan Liberal Alliance, who trailed Ortega by 8 points in the preliminary count.
Jose Rizo, of the Constitutionalist Liberal Party, said the preliminary results were misleading because they did not include many polling stations in Nicaragua's remote rural areas, where his support is strongest. He said a count by his campaign workers put him close enough behind Ortega to force a runoff election.
However, the results released by the electoral commission were bolstered by similar findings from a "quick count" of a representative sample of ballots released Monday by Ethics and Transparency, a widely respected Nicaraguan civic group that fielded 11,050 observers to every polling and counting center in the nation to carry out their own tally alongside the official one.
At a news conference in Managua on Monday, Pablo Ay?n, president of Ethics and Transparency, said their count, giving Ortega 38 percent of the vote, had a margin of error of 1.7 percent.
Although there were complaints of irregularities at some polling stations, international observer teams declared that the election was orderly and lawful.
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/frontpage/story/0,,1941266,00.html
Tuesday November 7, 2006
Ortega back in power, early poll results show
· Sandinista head 'triumphs in Nicaraguan first round'
· Split opposition cries foul and US warns of sanctions
Reported by Rory Carroll, Latin America correspondent / The Guardian
Supporters of Daniel Ortega celebrate in the streets of Managua, Nicaragua. Photograph: Dario Lopez-Mills/AP
The Sandinista leader and former Marxist revolutionary Daniel Ortega appeared to have mounted a spectacular political comeback last night after preliminary results showed he had won Nicaragua's presidential election in the first round.
Mr. Ortega led by a margin which seemed wide enough to avoid a run-off and to deliver a stinging rebuke to Washington, which had openly campaigned against him. Returns from about 40% of polling stations gave him 40.1%, far ahead of his four rivals and over the threshold for victory. An estimate by an independent watchdog, Ethics and Transparency, which was spot on in previous elections, put him at 38.5% and nine points clear of his nearest rival.
To win in the first round a candidate must score 40%, or more than 35% with a five-point margin over the nearest rival. The Sandinistas did not wait for the final results to erupt in jubilation, with thousands pouring on to the streets to sing, dance, wave black and red flags, and set off fireworks. Mr. Ortega, 60, mellower and cagier since losing three previous elections, made no immediate statement.
Since being ousted from the presidency in 1990, in the wake of a brutal civil war against US-sponsored contra rebels and crippling sanctions by Washington, Mr. Ortega has reinvented himself as a moderate and devout Catholic. From a social progressive, critics say he has changed into an ego-driven opportunist who has ditched women's rights and income redistribution in his quest for power. Nevertheless, his victory, if confirmed, will be hailed by Cuba and Venezuela as a leftward tilt in Latin America.
The Sandinistas' main challenger, Eduardo Montealegre, a conservative banker favoured by Washington, trailed at 32.7%, according to the early polling returns. Ethics and Transparency pegged him lower, at 29.5%. Mr. Montealegre did not concede defeat, citing irregularities in Sunday's vote. "In a democracy, that is unacceptable. We are going to a second round," he said.
If Mr. Ortega's victory is confirmed it will be testimony to his stamina and his opponents' disarray, rather than a surge in his popularity. He scored around the same or better in 1990, 1996 and 2001, yet lost. A change in the law which lowered the threshold for a first-round victory and a split in conservative ranks rewarded the former revolutionary's endurance in running a fourth time. The Sandinistas also split, but the dissident candidate, Edmundo Jarquin, languished at 7%, according to the early results.
Mr. Ortega would probably lose a run-off, since the 60% of the population which dislikes him - a figure which has barely budged in four previous elections - could unite around a single opponent.
US officials in the capital, Managua, echoed the claims of irregularities but said they would await the final results before giving a verdict on the election. The Bush administration warned that aid and trade with Nicaragua might suffer if its cold war foe from the Reagan years returned to power. Venezuela, by contrast, offered cheap oil to Sandinista supporters and hinted of more to come should Hugo Chávez's ally join the "pink tide" of leftwing Latin American leaders.
Roberto Rivas, the head of Nicaragua's top electoral body, said the vote was clean and transparent. An army of 17,000 observers, including the former US president Jimmy Carter and EU officials, was expected largely to endorse that view.
Many polling stations opened late because of squabbling between rival party officials who ran the stations, and about 12% of stations closed while people were still queuing to vote. Ethics and Transparency said the numbers affected were too small to affect the outcome.
Mr. Ortega ran a deft campaign which mobilized his base with small, but enthusiastic rallies throughout the country. He shunned media interviews and huge rallies lest they concentrated his opponents' minds. Sixteen years of successive conservative governments have left the country stable, but impoverished, making many receptive to his promises of jobs, housing and social services.
But to some critics he is still an authoritarian radical, no matter how many times John Lennon's Give Peace a Chance anthem was played at his rallies. If the losers reject the final result, Nicaragua, though peaceful, could swiftly slide into a political crisis and frighten investors.
A change of policy
* No longer advocates central planning but wants to promote "fair markets" and may renegotiate US trade agreement. Hints that landless peasants ought to receive own plots.
* Preaches reconciliation and appointed Jamie Morales, former Contra spokesman, as running mate. Paid Morales compensation for seizing his home in 1980s. Ortega still lives in it.
* Apologized to Mesqitos, a rural community whose homes were torched by Sandinistas for cooperating with Contra rebels.
* Still chummy with Cuba's Fidel Castro, and also Venezuela's Hugo Chávez, but pledges to seek good relations with all countries, including the US.
* Has abandoned secularism and embraced Catholic church.
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http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/headline/world/4315002.html
Nov. 6, 2006, 9:17PM
Effort by U.S. to derail Ortega comes up short
Ex-Marxist rebel likely won't face a runoff in his bid to regain presidency
By JOHN OTIS and TIM ROGERS
Email= john.otis@chron.com
Managua, Nicaragua - With his apparent victory in Nicaragua's presidential election, Daniel Ortega overcame a high-profile push by U.S. officials to derail his campaign.
Critics including American Ambassador Paul Trivelli, Republican members of the U.S. Congress and former White House aide Oliver North warned Nicaraguans that a government led by the former Marxist revolutionary would lead to cutoffs of the country's estimated $220 million in annual aid and a deep freeze in relations with Central America's poorest nation.
"They did everything but threaten to invade," said Mark Weisbrot, a Latin America expert at the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington.
U.S. interference
Many Nicaraguans were not listening. Ortega, a close friend of Venezuela's leftist President Hugo Chavez, led the five-man race and, based on incomplete returns Monday night, seemed poised to avoid a runoff.
When Ortega emerged as the front-runner in this year's campaign, U.S. officials began speaking out against him. They branded Ortega as corrupt and anti-democratic and warned that Chavez, a strident U.S. opponent who had publicly endorsed the Sandinista leader, would have a new platform from which to spread his influence in Latin America.
The American campaign against Ortega hit a crescendo shortly before Sunday's vote. U.S. Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez warned that all U.S. aid for Nicaragua could be at stake. Other officials said the country could be left out of the Central American Free Trade Agreement and that remittances sent home by Nicaraguans living in the United States could be blocked.
By contrast, Chavez promised to step in with economic aid and cheap oil for a leftist Sandinista government. In the end, many voters decided to give Ortega another chance.
"Nicaraguans worry that bad relations with the United States can have really negative consequences," said William LeoGrande, a professor at American University in Washington. "But some were offended (by the U.S. interference) on nationalistic grounds and were more likely to vote for Ortega."
Official returns from 61 percent of the nation's polling stations Monday night put Ortega in the lead with 38.6 percent, compared to 30.9 percent for Eduardo Montealegre, a Harvard-educated banker supported by the United States. Former Vice President Jose Rizo of the ruling Constitutional Liberal Party finished third with about 23 percent.
Earlier on Monday, a nationwide quick count vote sampling by a Nicaraguan electoral watchdog group showed Ortega winning with 38.5 percent, compared to 29.5 percent for Montealegre. To avoid a runoff, Ortega needed either 40 percent of the vote, or 35 percent with at least a five-point margin of victory.
"The Sandinistas won the election," said Pablo Ayon, president of the Nicaraguan Civic Group for Ethics and Transparency, the U.S.-funded organization that carried out the quick count. "In our opinion, these results are final."
Although Ortega stayed behind closed doors for much of Monday, his supporters drove through the streets of Managua, waving red-and-black Sandinista flags and singing a Spanish-language version of John Lennon's Give Peace A Chance, the party's campaign theme.
"This is a moment of great happiness after 16 years of sadness," said a tearful Tomas Borge, who in the early 1960s helped found the Sandinista guerrilla movement that overthrew dictator Anastasio Somoza in 1979 and ruled Nicaragua with the Soviet Union's support for the following decade.
Montealegre, a dissident Liberal, was a key part of Washington's strategy to stop Ortega. Fed up with corruption in the ruling Constitutional Liberal Party, U.S. Ambassador Trivelli and other officials promoted Montealegre, a former foreign minister, as the best man to take on Ortega.
Instead, the Liberals nominated Rizo, who refused U.S. suggestions to drop out. On Sunday, Montealegre and Rizo appeared to have split the majority anti-Sandinista vote. Together, they received far more votes than Ortega.
Although Ortega lost the past three elections by huge margins, the Sandinista took advantage of growing dismay over government corruption scandals as well as the Sandinista Party's formidable get-out-the-vote machine. His victory would give the Sandinistas a second chance to govern, this time in a more peaceful, post-Cold War era in Central America.
Rogers, a freelance journalist, reported from Managua; Otis, from Bogota, Colombia
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http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/cold.war/kbank/profiles/ortega/
Profile= Daniel Ortega Saavedra
Born in La Libertad, Nicaragua, on November 11, 1945, to middle-class parents who were actively opposed to Nicaragua's dictator, Anastasio Somoza, Ortega was first arrested for his political activities at the age of 15.
During the early 1960s, after only a few months as a student at the Central American University in Managua, he joined the underground Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN). He was put in charge of its urban guerrilla wing in 1967. However, that same year Somoza's National Guard captured him. Ortega was in prison until 1974. Upon his release, the result of a Sandinista hostage taking, he went to Cuba and next returned to Nicaragua to continue what was now a war against the government.
Ortega was one of the leading commanders of the forces that ousted Somoza in July 1979 and became the head of the ruling junta at the head of the government of national reconstruction. A coalition of various opposition groups at first, the junta quickly became the exclusive domain of the Sandinistas as the other members left, dissatisfied with what was turning into a leftist and somewhat corrupt dictatorship. However, the Sandinista regime did initiate significant reforms that, in many cases, were of great benefit to Nicaragua's poor and could have achieved more, had it not been for a new civil war.
In November 1984, the Sandinistas were victorious in national elections, and Ortega became Nicaragua's president. Opponents charged that the Sandinistas had manipulated conditions during the election campaign in such a way that, although clean at first sight, the vote was actually rather tainted. The U.S. government of Ronald Reagan shared the opposition's criticisms and further intensified U.S. support for the so-called "Contra" rebels -- a coalition of dissatisfied peasants, former Sandinista allies and Somozistas. The result was a cruel and costly civil war that in 1989 compelled the Sandinistas to accept a peace arrangement negotiated by Costa Rican President Oscar Arias Sanchez.
In the February 1990 elections under the Arias agreement, Ortega and the Sandinistas lost to a right-centrist coalition led by Violeta Barrios de Chamorro. Ortega relinquished the presidency the following April. Since that time, he has remained an influential leader in the Sandinista movement and through it, although less so recently, in Nicaraguan politics. Most recently, he has been in the news in connection with accusations of sexual abuse by a female member of his family.
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http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/cold.war/episodes/18/interviews/ortega/
Interview= Daniel Ortega Saavedra
Daniel Ortega Saavedra was president of Nicaragua from 1985-1990. As one of the leading commanders of the Sandinista forces that ousted Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza in July 1979, he became head of the ruling junta in the subsequent leftist regime. In disputed elections in November 1984, he was elected president. During the 1980s Ortega led the Sandinistas in a long and bloody civil war against the U.S.-backed Contras -- a coalition of dissatisfied peasants, former Sandinista allies and Somozistas. A peace arrangement led to national elections in 1990, and Ortega and the Sandinistas were defeated by a right-centrist coalition led by Violeta Chamorro. Ortega relinquished the presidency in April 1991. He was interviewed for COLD WAR in September and October of 1997. This interview has been translated from Spanish.
On the origins of the Sandinista revolution:
We grew up in a situation where we didn't know what freedom or justice were, and therefore we didn't know what democracy was. ... The people of Nicaragua were suffering oppression. This made us develop an awareness which eventually led us to commit ourselves to the struggle against the domination of the capitalists of our country in collusion with the U.S. government, i.e. imperialism. And that's why our struggle took on an anti-imperialist character.
One has to bear in mind that during my childhood and adolescence, I suffered the repression of the Somoza dictatorship in every way: economically, socially, as well as at the hands of the police -- because if we went out on the street to play baseball, for example, the police would come and beat us up and put us in prison. There was nowhere for young people to play sports, and all we experienced was repression. I also became aware through the experience of my family, because my father had fought alongside Sandino and had been imprisoned by Somoza, and my mother was also anti-Somoza and had been sent to jail. And they used to tell all those stories. On the other hand, there were no civic channels through which one might try to achieve change in our country, so we came to the conclusion that the only way to overthrow the dictatorship was through armed struggle.
The Cuban Revolution hadn't triumphed yet. My idol was Sandino, and also Christ. I was brought up a Christian, but I regarded Christ as a rebel, a revolutionary, someone who had committed himself to the poor and the humble and never sided with the powerful. I had a Christian upbringing, so I would say that my main early influences were a combination of Christianity, which I saw as a spur to change, and Sandinism, represented by the resistance against the Yankee invasion. Later, the triumph of the Cuban Revolution was very influential, and Fidel, Che, and Camilo [Cienfuegos] became our main role models. There were also wars going on in Algeria and in Vietnam, which further encouraged us to believe that victory was possible.
On Latin American support for the Sandinistas:
[Cuba and Nicaragua] were close together and both suffered a dictatorship backed by the United States: there it was Batista, here it was Somoza. And there was a desire for profound change; I mean, not just replacing one dictatorship with another, or going from an iron dictatorship to a formal dictatorship within the framework of liberal politics: we wanted a more profound social change, a socialist change, and naturally that led us to identify with the Cuban Revolution.
[Visiting Cuba], I really felt transported to a country that was challenging imperialism, that was putting forward an alternative to capitalism. I mean, it was challenging world capitalism and also the heavy weight of international imperialism. And one came face to face with these very spiritual, moral people who had a great fighting spirit. That's what I felt when I went to Cuba for the first time. ...
Before the triumph of the Revolution, we received aid primarily from Cuba. Cuba had always supported the Sandinista struggle. Later on, as we developed the struggle in our country, Cuba was able to give us much more support. When the governments of Carlos Andres Perez in Venezuela, Omar Torrijos in Panama and Rodrigo Carazo in Costa Rica coincided in power, it became easier to bring in weapons from Havana through Panama, and then from Havana directly to Costa Rica, which of course assisted us greatly in overthrowing Somoza's dictatorship.
[Weapons] arrived by air, on airplanes which transported the weapons to Panama. In Panama, the Cuban weapons would be added to some weapons that Panama and Venezuela were giving us, and then they were taken to Costa Rica. In Costa Rica, we would receive the weapons and bring them into the country clandestinely. I would say that that was the way the logistics worked. Most of the weapons were rifles, some artillery (especially antiaircraft artillery), some mortars, but above all it was rifles, which were what the population most needed, because people wanted to fight but they had no arms. ...
Before that time, we received invaluable support from the late Costa Rican leader Jose Figueres, and his help was crucial for the first stage of our insurrection in October Ô77. During our preparations for the insurrection, we were able to count on some weapons which had been left over from Figueres's revolutionary struggle in the Forties; he gave us several dozen rifles, and some machine-guns (which I think included a .30-caliber one and a .50-caliber one). We also got some weapons from the United States, because some of our comrades worked in the solidarity [movement] in the United States and had connections there, so they found a way of buying weapons in the United States and bringing them to Nicaragua via Mexico.
On the Sandinistas' relationship with the United States:
[We took power] with great enthusiasm and a great desire to transform the country, but also with the worry that we would have to confront the United States, something which we regarded as inevitable. It's not that we fell into a kind of geopolitical fatalism with regard to the United States, but historically speaking the United States has been interfering in our country since the last century, and so we said, "The Yankees will inevitably interfere. If we try to become independent, the United States will intervene."
I would say that we tried to neutralize that confrontation with the United States, and around September of Ô79 I went to the United Nations, and before that I visited Washington and had a meeting with President Carter. During the meeting with President Carter, we proposed the development of a new kind of relationship with the United States. During our exchange, [he said that] the American government was worried about the implications of the revolution and that the conservative sections of the United States perceived it as a threat. We insisted that this was an opportunity, as I said to Carter, for the United States to make good the historical damage they had inflicted on our country. Our national anthem still includes the words "Yankee, the enemy of humanity," and we said to him that the only way to abolish that line would be for the attitude of the imperialist powers to change throughout the world, and specifically towards Nicaragua. And then, in concrete terms, we asked President Carter for a certain amount of economic help, and for material support to build up a new army, because the old one had been wiped out. We needed weapons, because Nicaragua didn't manufacture any at the time, so we were asking them to help us in this respect. But they couldn't respond, because there was a public debate going on in the United States at that moment, and the conservatives were accusing Carter of opening the door to "communism," which was the word they used for these changes. It was up to the U.S. Congress to make these kinds of decisions, and the Congress did not want to approve such decisions.
[Our relationship with Cuba] was precisely the challenge -- that the United States should respect our right to maintain friendly relations with whoever Nicaragua wanted. If the United States wanted to put conditions on Nicaragua's relations [with other countries], then it meant that we were starting off on the wrong foot, that the old imperialist attitude was still the same and there was nothing democratic about it at all, and that they were keeping up their dictatorial attitude throughout the world, supported by their economic and military power. So this meant that we started trying to find weapons in other parts of the world. Of course, the kind of support that Cuba could give us was very limited when it came to building up our army, since they didn't manufacture armaments in the quantities that we required. So we turned to Algeria and the Soviet Union for support. The first weapons that we received came from Algeria. Algeria identified very much with our struggle. We conducted a series of negotiations at the time, and the first reply we received came from Algeria. Then we began to receive support from other countries of the socialist community, and mainly from the Soviet Union. ...
I remember perfectly well that when we began working in that direction, which we did quite openly, the U.S. government sent us an emissary, Mr. Thomas Enders, and I remember my conversation with him. He came to tell us very clearly that the United States was not going to allow a Soviet-Cuban communist bridgehead to be established in this continent. I said that we had a right to maintain relations with any other country, and that they should respect that right. And then he said that I should understand that they had to power to crush us, to which I replied that we were ready to fight and confront them even though they were a big power -- that Sandino had already confronted them in the past and that we were ready to do so again if they tried to crush us.
On Soviet support for the Sandinista regime:
Well, first of all, we did not assume that others would fight on our behalf; we the Nicaraguans were ready to fight ourselves. What we asked for were weapons so that we could defend ourselves -- that's what we asked of the Soviet Union, of the socialist countries of Eastern Europe, of the Algerians, of the Vietnamese; and that's what we received so that we could arm the Nicaraguan people and defend ourselves in that war imposed on us by Ronald Reagan's Administration over a number of years.
[From the Soviet Union] we received rifles, which were still what our government most needed, because clearly, if the United States invaded us, we wouldn't be in a position to wage a mobile war with heavy armaments, so our defense would have to rely on our ability to develop popular resistance forces, guerrillas, throughout the country. So rifles were our main request, plus a few heavy armaments. Some tanks and helicopters arrived from the Soviet Union, but we never managed to get any MiG planes. We asked for planes so that we could use them in this war imposed on us by the United States, because with interceptor planes we could have neutralized the Contras' aerial logistics from Honduras, El Salvador and Costa Rica. But it seems that the United States put such heavy pressure on the Soviet Union, that even though the Soviets were willing and had already committed themselves in writing to send us MiG-21 planes and trained [our] pilots ... they began procrastinating. And I even remember that in one of the exchanges we had with them, they said that the United States had threatened [them] -- and I remember they even did it publicly during a visit to France, in the presence of President Mitterrand. We had explored the possibility of the French sending us Mirage [planes], and the French were willing; and when this became known, the Americans reacted by announcing publicly that they would not allow those armaments to enter Nicaragua and that they would bomb the Nicaraguan ports [if they arrived]. We asked the Soviets and the French to send the planes regardless, that we were willing to take the risk of Nicaragua being bombed. But in the end it wasn't possible for the planes to arrive in our country. There was an attempt, I remember, to send some smaller planes from Libya, and those planes got as far as Brazil, where they were intercepted and sent back to Libya.
I think that the Soviet Union was guided by a socialist agenda, and that this socialist agenda was in the minds of the Soviet leadership and Party members. There was a conviction that the socialist cause was a just one, and so wherever there were struggles against colonialism, imperialism and neocolonialism, the Soviet Union would support those struggles and those causes, in the form of economic and military help. The economic assistance that the Soviet Union gave Nicaragua was invaluable.
On the Sandinistas' war with the Contras:
The fact is that the United States is behind what has happened in Nicaragua, and what they did was to promote a confrontation between Nicaraguans. And we already know how many millions of dollars and armaments they approved for the war in Nicaragua, and the things that were openly discussed in the U.S. Congress about our ports, the contempt of the United States for international law, for the resolutions of the United Nations Security Council and the decisions of the International Court of Justice, and so on. And of course, it was painful to have to accept that we were being confronted by another part of the Nicaraguan people, who were as poor as the Sandinistas who were defending the Revolution, but who acted as tools of an imperialist policy. ...
This was a war that went beyond [Nicaragua], and without the United States the Contras would not have existed. Without the United States it would have been impossible for Somoza's former Guard to regroup, and it was they who started to organize the first counterrevolutionary units. Without the United States, there simply would not have been an armed uprising in our country. So I think it's very clear that external factors played a role in this matter, because I repeat, if I had had the resources to start fostering wars, I could have done so anywhere in the world -- in the United States, for example: first stir people up and then provide them with the weapons to defend the rights they feel they have been denied. ...
I would say that what was going on here was a confrontation with the United States. That was their discourse and that's how they trained [the Contras]. I mean, they trained them to make the same speech to the people as Somoza had made. Somoza set himself up as dictator of our country in the name of anti-communism and the fight against communism, and according to Somoza, Sandino was a communist, as he was in the eyes of the United States. So the training they gave the Contras -- that whole manual the CIA prepared and all the rest of it -- was aimed at exacerbating an already backward mentality, because a population with more than 60 percent illiteracy is obviously a backward population; and a good part of the Contras themselves come from this same section of the population.
On the Sandinistas' 1990 electoral defeat:
[The United States] invaded Panama, which had a great influence on the elections in our country -- because this happened two months before the 1990 elections, and it broke up the support we had and the votes we had accumulated during the campaign. In December we had 47 percent support, with two months' campaigning still to do; [then] the invasion of Panama took place on December 23rd. And when we did a poll the following January, we had come down 10 points to 37 percent --- by which time we were one month away from the elections. ...
It wasn't a completely free election because there was open interference from the United States, from President Bush, in the form of financial and political support to our opponents, as well as threats that the blockade would not be lifted and all the rest of it if [the anti-Sandinitsta opposition party] UNO didn't win. The decisive moment was the invasion of Panama.
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Links from Domingo, Nov 5, 2006= Aztlannet_News Report
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The People's Struggle Wages On In Oaxaca! Stay Alert!
November 05, 2006= The Popular Uprising in Oaxaca, Mexico
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=20061105&articleId=3712
November 04, 2006= Que Pasa en Oaxaca? by MICHAEL MCCAUGHAN
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20061120/oaxaca
Saturday, November 04, 2006= Video de La victoria del pueblo de Oaxaca el 2 de noviembre
http://detodos-paratodos.blogspot.com/2006/11/video-de-la-victoria-del-pueblo-de.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jf6H_sxCx3k
November 03, 2006= Oaxaca Video Collective Needs Your Support.
http://elenemigocomun.net/368
Contact justin@riseup.net
BRADLEY: In Memoriam
http://video.indymedia.org/en/2006/11/551.shtml
October 31, 2006= Mexico: The last moments of Bradley Roland Will + Video Link
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Aztlannet_News/message/25995
http://www.globalvoicesonline.org/2006/10/30/mexico-the-last-moments-of-bradley-roland-will/
Video= Mexican government killed american journalist
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o22L-xEVRqY
Hoy PG - Contra la ignorancia: informaci¨®n
http://hoypg.blogspot.com
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Peter S. Lopez ~aka Peta de Aztlan
Email= sacranative@yahoo.com
Sacramento, California, Amerika
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Key Web Links=
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