Written by Chris Floyd
Ortega back in power, early poll results show
From the Guardian: The Sandinista leader and former Marxist revolutionary Daniel Ortega appeared to have mounted a spectacular political comeback last night after preliminary re sults 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...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.
Ortega ran and won with the backing of several prominent ex-Contras, including Jamie Morales, his own running mate. Morales had been the Contras' spokesman in Washington during the Reagan years when, with the direct involvement of VP George Bush, the Administration joined hands with the mullahs of Iran and the druglords of Central and South America to fund, arm and train a terrorist army to overthrow the Sandinista government. Although this exercise in mass state terrorism failed on the battlefield, the Reagan-Bush policy of economic terror managed to reduce Nicaragua to dire poverty, with the open threat that the stranglehold would go on until the Sandinistas were gone.
Of course, the stated reason for the Reagan-Bush hatred of Ortega was
that he was an evil Commie tyrant and dictator who opposed democracy.
However, oddly enough, when a majority of Nicaraguans bowed to the
American blackmail in 1990 and voted against Sandinistas, these evil,
anti-democratic Commie tyrant dictators....left office. They obeyed the
obviously coerced but democratically expressed will of the people. And
now, Ortega -- no shining knight but, in the end, a rather typical
politician eager for power but with at least an inclination toward
mitigating some of the most pernicious effects of predatory crony
capitalism -- has been returned, democratically, to power...without
"robocalls," without "push-polls," without strangely malfunctioning
voting machines that only make "mistakes" in favor of one party, with
"voter roll purges," etc. etc.
What will happen now? It's obvious: the Bush II administration -- which
is clotted with many of the same Constitution-hating state terrorists
who threw in with druglords and Islamic extremists during the Contra
War -- has already announced its intention to resume the old economic
terrorism against the wretchedly poor people of Nicaragua. American
officials stated plainly that trade restrictions and cutbacks, if not
cut-offs, in U.S. aid were in the cards if the Nicaraguans exercised
their democratic rights in favor of the Sandinistas. They even sent
Oliver North down to tour the country before the election -- the
clearest possible signal for the rabble to get in line, rather like
having Frank Nitti drive through the neighborhood to remind the
shopkeepers to pay up their protection money to Al Capone.
The only question remaining is whether the Iran-Contra criminal gang
now restored to the White House will be content with economic sabatoge
of the Nicaraguan government. After all, this time Ortega will have the
backing of Venezeula's Hugo Chavez, who has promised cheap oil and
other economic benefits to the Sandinistas. The Washington squeeze play
won't be quite as effective this time around. So will they move on to
more physical methods of destabilization? Will they sponsor another
mass-murdering civil war? Or will it be confined to covert ops? After
all, the great googily-moogily of American intelligence, John
Negroponte, made his bones in the region during the Reagan-Bush reign
of terror, operating out of Honduras as the United States spread war
and repression across Central America.*
Today's election in the United States won't make any difference to
whatever Nitti-like plans the Bush Administration has in store for the
disobedient Nicaraguans. Even if the Democrats take Congress,
Negroponte, Bush, Cheney, Elliot Abrams (the convicted Iran-Contra
liar) and the others will still be in power. The only thing a
Democratic win might affect is how overtly or covertly the gang decides
to take its revenge. But there's no doubt that one way or another, the
Nicaraguan people are about to learn that in the Bush Imperium,
democracy is never free; if you vote the "wrong" way, you've got to pay
the price.
*For more background on the Reagan-Bush gang's bloodsoaked history in Central America, see the links after the jump.*
"Death, Lies, and Bodywashing,"
Consortiumnews.com, May 27, 1996
"Funeral Games,"
Chris Floyd, Counterpunch, June 11, 2004
"US Role in Salvador's Brutal War,"
BBC, March 24, 2002
"Guatemala: Memory of Silence,"
Report of the Commission for Historical Clarification,"
"Reagan's Dark Global Legacy,"
Counterpunch, June 7, 2004
"Reagan and Guatemala's Death Files,"
Consortiumnews.com, May 26, 1999
"The Ghost of Terror Past,"
Salon.com, Jan. 11, 2002
"Media Lies About Reagan and North,"
Altercation, June 8, 2004
Time for a U.S. Truth Commission (CIA terror manual, etc.)
Consortiumnews.com, Feb. 17, 1997 (via Third World Traveler)
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