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On 5/25/11 4:43 AM, John oneill wrote:
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Daniel Ortega became a victim of his
own success. His socialist revolution brought democracy to Nicaragua,
but the people refused to elect him. In 2007 he finally became president
of the country, and now he is launching a power grab for himself and his
family that is breathtaking in its ruthlessness, writes TOM HENNIGAN in
Managua
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/magazine/2011/0507/1224295952855.htm
This was behind a firewall. Here's the text:
The Irish Times
May 7, 2011 Saturday
After the revolution
SECTION: MAGAZINE; Magazine Features; Pg. 19
LENGTH: 3404 words
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Daniel Ortega became a victim of his
own success. His socialist revolution brought democracy to Nicaragua,
but the people refused to elect him. In 2007 he finally became president
of the country, and now he is launching a power grab for himself and his
family that is breathtaking in its ruthlessness, writes TOM HENNIGANin
Managua
ITH HIS SHORT-SLEEVED shirt open to the navel and a toothpick in the
corner of his mouth, el Chapiollo navigates a way through Managua s
unruly traffic with an air of authority that belies the fact that his
car is one of the most dilapidated on the road.
Maneouvering with a mixture of precision and measured aggression that
has other drivers backing off, he recounts his soldier s life: At 14
years of age my family sent me to a military academy. But a year later
my cousin warned me the army was doomed and told me to get out before
everything went to hell. So I ran away and joined the guerrillas in the
mountains.
It was sound advice. In July 1979, the guerrillas routed the military
and entered Managua, overthrowing the Somoza dictatorship. Nicaragua s
Sandinista revolution was underway.
El Chapiollo joined the new national army and spent the 1980s fighting
the Contras, counter-revolutionaries backed by the Reagan administration
in Washington, which viewed the Sandinistas and their leader Daniel
Ortega as a Soviet Trojan horse in the heart of Central America.
Battled hardened, el Chapiollo would be sent to Cuba for training and,
on his return home, was assigned to an elite special-forces battalion,
engaging the Contras alongside Soviet and Libyan advisers in the same
mountains he had fought over as a teenage guerrilla. The Contra war was
very ugly. They were more terrorists than soldiers. So when Ortega lost
the presidential election in 1990, there was a general feeling of
frustration in the army. After so many deaths we felt the people were
ungrateful and that our sacrifice was all for nothing.
He remained in the military where widespread Sandinista sympathies were
at odds with those of the pro-Washington presidents who succeeded
Ortega. They even sent us to Iraq to fight in the imperialists war! he
says incredulously. All the soldiers were all against it. But we went.
Then, after 16 long years in opposition and three presidential election
defeats, Ortega finally led the Sandinistas back to power when he won
the 2006 presidential election. Today, all over Managua, his smiling
face beams down from billboards proclaiming: Viva la Revolución!
But asked if he is happy about his old comandante s return to power, el
Chapiollo, a civilian again after 27 years, pauses. Then, speaking with
the same deliberate precision as his driving, he gives his answer.
No. Today I am still a Sandinista but I am not an Ortegista. Ortega has
betrayed the revolution. He is no longer a socialist but a capitalist.
He has turned into a caudillo [a dictator with a military background].
Daniel has become a new Somoza. The people need to open their eyes and
see what is happening.
IT WAS UNDER Ortega s leadership that the Sandinistas were supposed to
have ended Nicaragua s long tradition of rule by caudillo strongmen with
the toppling of the Somozas. The family, which used a mix of
paternalism, corruption and state violence to build a hereditary
dictatorship that lasted more than four decades, was meant to be the
last of a dictatorial tradition that had plagued the country since
independence from Spain in 1821.
As well as socialism, the revolution of 1979 brought democracy to
Nicaragua. The presidential elections of 1984 and 1990 were widely seen
as free and fair. Expected to be comfortably re-elected beforehand,
Ortega s defeat in 1990 shocked most observers, domestic and foreign it
was, perhaps, the best endorsement of the integrity of the country s
fledging democracy. But ever since peacefully leaving office, Ortega has
been slowly rewinding the tape of Nicaraguan history, back to before the
revolution, and in doing so, he is reviving the spectre of
