Liberals defeat Sandinistas in Nicaraguan elections

On Monday Sandinista candidate Daniel Ortega conceded defeat to Liberal Constitutionalist Party candidate Enrique Bolanos. This ends the possibility of the Sandinista government coming to power in Nicaragua in the next five years. However, some think the election was tampered with by the United States, despite ex-President Jimmy Carter's supervision of the elections.\nLast week U.S. Ambassador to Nicaragua, Oliver Garza, again campaigned with the liberal party's candidate, Bolanos, according to a press release from the Nicaragua Network. Both were present on October 16 in the same communities in Matagalpa to give out food assistance. Bolanos at first said that his presence with the US diplomat was by chance. He later admitted that he had been invited by the US Embassy to endorse the Food for Work Program financed by USAID. Bolanos said he was invited to the event because his campaign was nearby. \nU.S. involvement in the Nicaraguan elections has drawn added criticism to the United States's relations with foreign governments. \n\"The United States will lose credibility for this\" said Barbara Seitz de Martinez, Chair of the Bloomington-Posoltega Sister Cities committee. \"It was terribly blatant and terribly inappropriate for the United States to have an ambassador openly interfere with any candidate\'s campaign in a sovereign country.\"\nVirgilio Godoy, former vice-president of Nicaragua and member of the Liberal Independent Party currently aligned with the Conservative Party, compared Ambassador Garza to a \"cowboy of the Wild West\" and said that Garza is \"doing a bad thing by meddling in our internal politics,\" according to the Nicaragua Network.\nSergio Garca Quintero, a Nicaraguan representative in the Central American Parliament, asked that Ambassador Garza be declared \"persona non-grata.\" by the Nicaraguan government according to the Nicaragua Network. De Martinez has been an open critic of the US government for propping up corrupt governments to serve domestic interests. "The U.S. prioritizes stability over human rights," said De Martinez. She also pointed out that current president Aleman's administration was documented as being extremely corrupt. \n"Nothing can yet be said about Balones, who was the Vice President of the Aleman administration,\" said de Martinez. "We are building nations. If the (Balonos) administration does turn out to be corrupt, critics can say that the United States put them there.\" \nBut Professor Jeffrey Gould, Director of the Center for Latin American Studies, said the Nicaraguan electorate was faced with two poor options in this election. \"The Sandinista party is tainted with corruption. It is not as corrupt as the administration that preceded it, but the Sandinistas acted internally in undemocratic ways. And none of that helped their cause in this election.\"\nA third Conservative Party showed promise earlier this year, but it ceased to exist after early July. \n\"The U.S. feared that the anti-Ortega vote would be divided by the conservative party, thus winning Ortega the election\" said Gould. According to Gould, the Conservative Party withdrew after a conference with the U.S. embassy.\nProfessor Jeffrey Hart, chair of the Political Science Department, said the Sandinistas alienated their coalition while in office by reconfiguring their image to make themselves more popular to the electorate. He found it telling that Ortega lost by such a close margin.\nFrom 1979 to 1990 the Ortega administration guaranteed primary education to all Nicaraguan citizens and improved health care. However, Ortega did not have the means to maintain a base of wealth. Critics say this was due in part to a United States embargo during his administration. \nDuring much of the 1980s, Nicaraguan aid to leftist rebels in El Salvador caused the United States to sponsor anti-Sandinista Contra guerrillas in Nicaragua. This eventually caused the downfall of the Sandinista regime and democratic elections to be held in 1990.\nAccording to Gould, the Contra war allowed the hard-line Sandinistas to restrict the press and to disregard non-Sandinista social movements and protests. The embargo combined with support from the Contra made a huge impact on social programs, health care, and land acquisition.\n"The Sandinistas were an eclectic group, within which were Leninist tendencies" said Gould. "War conditions led Sandinistas to behave in certain ways that were already implicit in their program."\nGould also said the US had no business getting as involved with the election as it did. "We did everything short of endorsing Bolanos,\" said Gould. "And we made what could be seen as veiled threats that we would withdraw aid to Nicaragua if the Sandinistas did not change"