People's Democracy

EDITORIAL

Ortega Victory: Slap For US

THE election of Daniel Ortega as the president of Nicaragua is a stinging rebuff to the Bush administration. In the run-up to the elections, the United States blatantly worked against the Sandinista candidate. The Nicaraguan people were warned that aid and trade will be endangered if Ortega is elected. The US ambassador in Nicaragua and the US officials visiting the country did their best to unite the three right-wing parties to unitedly face the threat of the Santinistas. Some Republican congressmen even threatened to stop remittances being sent by Nicaraguans working in the US.

In this, the Americans were acting true to form. The United States had financed and equipped the “contras”, the reactionary counterrevolutionary force against the Sandinista government in the eighties. In the 1990 elections, the US played a major role in the defeat of the Sandinistas.

The Nicaraguan people ignored all these threats and voted Ortega to office with 38 per cent of the votes. With this victory, Ortega joins the Left bloc of elected leaders in South America. A few days earlier, president Lula of Brazil was re-elected in a run-off election with 60.4 per cent of the votes. The Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez has hailed the victory of Ortega. The Nicaraguan president has the unstinting support and help of Venezuela that has already supplied subsidised fuel to Sandinista-run municipalities to face up to the potential threats and intimidation from the United States.

The hallmark of the Bush administration has been aggressive interference in the internal affairs of various countries. Whether it is the Latin American countries, or Nepal, or Bangladesh, the US on the guise of promoting “democracy” seeks to set-up pliable regimes. It may be too much to expect, but hopefully the Nicaraguan results and the Republican debacle in the United States congressional elections will bring some sense of realism to Bush and his coterie.