Corrects Ortega’s age in paragraph 16
By Catherine Bremer
MANAGUA, Nicaragua (Reuters) - The United States has kicked up a new storm in Nicaragua, one of its Cold War battlefields, over its efforts to derail former Marxist revolutionary Daniel Ortega’s latest bid to return to power.
In the final stages of the November 5 election race, a string of U.S. officials have publicly voiced concerns about Ortega, saying a victory for him could hit U.S. aid and investment.
Many Nicaraguans are fuming at what they say are blatant attempts to scare them away from voting for Ortega, whose Sandinista rebel army came to power in 1979 and fought U.S.-funded Contra rebels in a 1980s civil war.
"They’re terrorizing people by saying aid and remittances will be cut off. But people have a right to elect whoever they want," said Mario Estrada, 44, a veteran of the revolution who was paralyzed at age 15 by a bullet in his spine.
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In Washington, U.S. State Department spokesman Sean McCormack rejected accusations of U.S. meddling.
"We’re not trying to shade opinion or to try to take a position," McCormack said in Washington.
But conservative voters in Nicaragua welcome U.S. pressure, seeing it as protection from a powerful old friend against a dangerous radical who could win a first-round victory on Sunday.
"I like it that the United States gets involved," said Sarbia Pena, 29. "They helped us a lot in the past. They’re still our friend."
U.S. pressure played a key role in the 1990 election when Ortega was toppled from power by war-weary voters and it helped block his return in the past two presidential votes.
Interference in Nicaragua goes back long before Ortega. Some of the first U.S. boots to march here belonged to the ragtag mercenary army of illegal military adventurer William Walker, who briefly declared himself Nicaragua’s president in 1856.
Washington deployed Marines here in the early 1900s and deposed unfriendly presidents.
"We threw rocks at William Walker -- we should do the same now," Estrada muttered. "They always interfere in our elections. They act as if we’re illiterate."
ANTI-U.S. ALLIANCE
The United States fears that a swing to the left under Ortega would bolster Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez’s anti-American stance in Latin America.
U.S. Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez and Ambassador Paul Trivelli warn that Ortega could hurt investment and aid and they have tried to reunite divided right-wing parties to beat him.
Ortega’s third comeback bid has been helped by a split in the conservative vote, the death of a Sandinista dissident rival, and a deal with Chavez to supply cut-price fuel.
Now 60 years old and balding, Ortega says he has mellowed and wants peace and fair markets. He has failed to convince some former U.S. heavyweights, who backed right-wing dictatorships in Latin America during the Cold War to keep communism at bay.
Former U.N. Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick co-hosted a recent fund-raiser for Ortega’s center-right rival Eduardo Montealegre. Oliver North, the Marine lieutenant colonel at the centre of the Iran-Contra scandal in the mid-1980s, says Washington should do more to block an Ortega victory and came to Managua last week to back ruling Liberal Party candidate Jose Rizo.
All the presidential candidates except Montealegre have complained about U.S. meddling, as have Nicaragua’s top electoral council and the top regional body in the Americas.
"No one should impose their opinion on another country. It shouldn’t happen," said Patricio Gajardo, the Organisation of American States’ electoral coordinator.
Voters are most worried about rumors the U.S. government could respond to an Ortega win by clamping down on the $700 million that Nicaraguan migrants send back home each year.
For Jessica Morales, 21, who shares a shabby mud-floor house in Managua with her half-blind grandmother, four cousins and a pet goose, the $50 her aunt sends from Florida each month has paid for a television and a mobile phone.
"If the money stops coming we’ll survive but we won’t be able to pay for the extra things like clothes for the children or if someone gets sick," she said.
