Campaigning manoeuvres towards the Nicaraguan presidential elections scheduled for November this year began in 2004, shortly after the municipal elections of that year. In those elections the FSLN and its allies in the Convergencia Nacional made a marked advance, winning 87 out of 153 municipal authorities, including Managua and most of the main departmental capitals. From that point on, right wing and centrist politicans as well as the US embassy have been trying to work out alliances and propaganda formulas to defeat the FSLN in the presidential elections of 2006.

Remarks by death-squad godfather and US intelligence supremo John Negroponte in early March that the US is watching with concern the election campaign in Nicaragua signalled a sharp escalation in interventions by the US ambassador, Paul Trivelli. Trivelli has been bolstered by leading figures from the Bush administration and its supporters. Over the last few months, people like Otto Reich, Robert Zoellick, Thomas Shannon and, lately, Jean Kirkpatrick have passed through Managua to reinforce Trivelli's efforts to discredit Daniel Ortega and defeat the FSLN.

Main parties and candidates

The main parties involved in the current election battle are the FSLN/Convergencia Nacional, the Constitutional Liberal Party (PLC), the Liberal Alliance for Nicaragua (ALN) allied with Nicaragua's small Conservative Party and the Alianza Herty 2006. The presidential candidate for the FSLN-led Convergencia is Daniel Ortega Saavedra. For the PLC it is Jose Rizo Castellon, a close ally of disgraced former president Arnoldo Aleman. The ALN candidate is leading businessman Eduardo Montealegre. Former mayor of Managua Herty Lewites is the candidate for the Alianza Herty 2006, which is supported by the Movimiento Renovador Sandinista, currently led by Dora Maria Tellez.

Of these candidates, the Liberal party candidates represent the country's right-wing. The FSLN/Convergencia represents the countries left-wing with some leading centrist nationalist politicians from other parties like Agustin Jarquin, Miriam Arguello and Jaime Norales. Herty Lewites has formed a centrist social democratic alliance based on a managerial and media class formed mainly of dissident sandinistas who reject the leadership of Daniel Ortega.

Support for these candidates seems to vary somewhat from one poll to the next but recent polls by the generally well-regarded Borges and Associates put Montealegre at around 30%, with Ortega and Lewites both on around 25%. In the recent elections for the Autonomous Regions of the Atlantic Coast, neither Montealegre nor Lewites performed well. That vote was split quite evenly between the PLC and their allies  and the FSLN and its allies. A good augury for the FSLN since the Atlantic Coast traditionally favours the Liberal parties.

Many people fail to realise that the Liberal governments of Arnoldo Aleman and Enrique Bolanos came to power based on an alliance of various Liberal parties. Aleman's great political achievement was to unify these fractious groups into one powerful national alliance. Once President Bolanos turned against Aleman through 2002 and facilitated his trial and imprisonment for corruption, that alliance fell irrevocably into pieces. The competing factions of the Nicaraguan right loath each other almost as much as they detest the sandinista FSLN. Remaking the alliance may well be impossible without Aleman's blessing.

Role of the US embassy

US ambassador Paul Trivelli is repeating the performance he gave when he served in the US embassy in San Salvador, helping defeat the FMLN in elections there. He has openly criticised Daniel Ortega and leading PLC politicians while clearly blessing Montealegre and centrist social democrat Herty Lewites. The aim of US intervention in the election is to unify the right and to divide the left and centre. The main obstacle to unification of the right wing parties is the looming presence of ex-Prsident Arnoldo Aleman. Although under house arrest, Aleman continues to dominate the PLC and alienate potential alliances. On the other hand, Trivelli's tacit support for Lewites has yielded still uncertain results. It is far from clear that the blessing of the US ambassador is helpful for Lewites candidacy.

Apart from ambassador Trivelli's blatant public interventions, US government money is being channelled into the Nicaraguan electoral process through US quangos like the International Republican Institute, the National Democratic Institute, and the National Endowment for Democracy. Some of the money is disbursed to local Nicaraguan NGOs like Hagamos Democracia and Etica y Transparencia, among others. Even more controversially, ambassador Trivelli has suggested that US government funds might finance primary votes for right-wing Nicaraguan political parties so as to produce an agreed single candidate. As Orlando Tardencilla of the tiny Alternativa Cristiana has pointed out, such a move would clearly contravene Nicaraguan law.

Intervention by US embassy personnel is likely to increase as the campaign intensifies nearer the actual vote in November. Trivelli has already given interviews in which he juxtaposes US preference for candidates like Montealegre and Lewites with the dependency of most Nicaraguans on family remittances from relatives in the United States. That kind of veiled threat is likely to be repeated insistently as the November vote draws near. Whether Trivelli will stoop to outright public campaigning for the preferred US candidate as his predecessor Oliver Garza did for Enrique Bolanos in 2001 remains to be seen.

Embassy rhetoric paints Montealegre and Lewites as promoting democracy. In contrast Ortega and leading PLC politicians are cast as sinister threats to democracy, a game in which both Montealegre and Lewites actively collude. But by choosing as their own candidate Jose Rizo Castellon, the PLC have caused Trivelli a dilemma. Rizo is an intimate ally of Arnoldo Aleman, but has somehow managed to keep a cleaner image than most of the other leading PLC politicians. It will be hard for Trivelli and his team to smear Rizo, which makes it harder for their preferred candidate Montealegre to consolidate support for himself. In the end the US government will be satisfied if they can stop the FSLN led by Daniel Ortega and will swallow a Rizo presidency with little difficulty, as a recent meeting between Trivelli and the PLC indicates.

Role of the social democrat managerial class

Key figures in the US embassy's anti-sandinista strategy paradoxically include several leading former FSLN members. Herty Lewites is backed by Luis Carrion, Victor Tirado, and Victor Hugo Tinoco, behind them stand respected figures like Henry Ruiz and Gioconda Belli. Other leading former sandinistas who have declared support for Lewites' candidacy over the last few months include Monica Baltodano and Dora Maria Tellez. With such an array of former leading sandinista figures one might have thought that Lewites could easily have outmanoeuvred Daniel Ortega within the FSLN. But he could not and was unanimously expelled from the party by its General Assembly along with Victor Hugo Tinoco in early 2005.

The political base of these figures is narrow, mostly in the NGO and media managerial classes. They share it with other sandinista dissidents who formed the Movimiento Renovadora Sandinista (MRS) in the mid 1990s under Sergio Ramirez. Lewites has avoided defining a political platform, limiting himself to attacks on Daniel Ortega and blurring the differences between himself and his former FSLN colleagues. The arguments around the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) were a clear example of that. During the run up to the vote in the legislature, Lewites resolutely refused to define his position, which by clear implication was pro-CAFTA. Subsequently he and his supporters have tried to confuse people by falsely alleging that the FSLN itself supported CAFTA.

El Nuevo Diario journalist Carlos Chamorro did just that in his widely circulated March interview with ambassador Trivelli.(1) In fact, the FSLN fiercely opposed CAFTA with all its deputies voting against when the treaty came to the legislature for ratification last year. Subsequently, the FSLN struck a legislative deal with the PLC on laws to protect vulnerable sectors of the Nicaraguan economy against the effects of the treaty. So both Lewites and Montealegre lost no time in asserting that the FSLN supported CAFTA after all.

Such disingenuous manipulation is routine in Nicaraguan politics but indicates the fundamental weakness of Lewites' candidacy. He is an opportunist waiting for whatever media puff he can catch to propel his candidacy and sustain momentum through to November. His contradictions undermine him. He accuses the FSLN of shameless deals with the PLC, while he himself is relentlessly wheeling and dealing in meetings with Eduardo Montealegre, with ambassador Trivelli, and sundry minor political players who may add lustre or substance to his candidacy. He has a reasonably solid power base in Managua but a shaky presence nationally which may or may not hold firm until the November vote.

A questionable land deal towards the end of Lewites' period as mayor of Managua may still dog his candidacy despite attempts by his supporters to dismiss the allegations as spurious. It is not unfair to note that Lewites' constant demands that his candidacy not be impugned by the Supreme Electoral Council serve as a very handy gambit to avoid facing that allegation in the courts. In any case, it remains to be seen how serious a candidacy Lewites is able to mount come November and how damaging to the FSLN his role as a spoiler will be. After heading voting preference polls through 2005, recent polls show Lewites losing ground, running level with Daniel Ortega - both well behind Eduardo Montealegre. However, until candidacies and alliances are better defined polling results mean little. Lewites may recover or may fade further, especially if he starts to lose support in his base, the capital Managua.

Venezuela - Chavez's new deal

A recent deal negotiated via the FSLN to supply Nicaraguan municipal authorities with low-cost fuel and fertilizer from Venezuela may alter the traditional dynamics of Nicaragua's presidential vote this year. A visit by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez to Nicaragua prior to the poll is likely, possibly for the July 19th anniversary of the overthrow of the Somoza dictatorship. The likelihood is that these factors will boost the perception that the FSLN offers a real alternative to the chronic policy failures of 16 years of faith-based neo-liberal gobbledy-gook applied by governments supported by US administrations in Washington.

This would demonstrate that Nicaragua has other options than simply doing as it is told by the United States government. Right-wing accusations of intervention by the Chavez administration in Nicaragua's internal affairs ring irremediably hollow given the welcome Liberal politicans gave former remarks by Salavadoran president ARENA politician Armando Calderon Sol criticising the FSLN and Daniel Ortega. The desperation of Liberal party politicians to smear the FSLN is evident in absurd accusations that Venezuela is bankrolling the FSLN to the tune of US$50 million.

Miguel Gomez, Venezuelan ambassador in Managua has insisted the Venezuelan government is limiting its support to material aid to Nicaragua. The low cost fuel and fertilizer supplies will ease the country's fuel price crisis and guarantee fertilizer at affordable prices for producers in the coming planting season that should begin with the May rains. Whether Venezuela's support for Nicaragua will boost support for the FSLN may depend on how sharply the energy crisis develops through the rest of 2006. Clearly the US government has no positive alternative with which to match the offer of energy price support from Venezuela.

Bogeymen, extortion and bluff-calling

Nicaragua has probably never had an election free from outside interference. This year the usual patterns will be repeated. Daniel Ortega and the FSLN will be demonized despite their inestimable contribution to the development of democratic politics in Nicaragua. US governments will continue their standard protection racket propaganda "wouldn't want anything to happen to those visa quotas and those important family remittances now, would you....?" Right-wing politicians will somehow whitewash the lamentable failure of 16 years of government by their parties to redeem the misery endured by a population of whom over 70% live in poverty. Opportunist maverick Herty Lewites will do well to avoid repeating the failure of former Vice-President Sergio Ramirez in 1995.

The recent massive demonstrations in the US by immigrants from Latin American countries indicate a change of mood among Latin American people concerning their relations with the United States. This may have as much to do with the grinding imperatives of their daily battles to survive in the United States as with the clear trend against pro-US government politicians throughout Latin America. But the days of unquestioning submission to US government wishes are over. The Nicaraguan election may or may not reinforce and confirm that message.

However, both in regional and in domestic political terms Nicaragua's November 2006 presidential elections are likely to mark the end of the era of straitjacket neo-liberal policies. Even if a US government approved candidate wins they will only do so in a context where US government policy formulae have no future. The energy crisis and the environmental crisis indicated by increasingly violent hurricane seasons make a continuance of neo-liberal economic and social policies untenable. Strike action by teachers, healthcare workers and public transport services over the last twelve months indicate that ordinary people's tolerance of miserable poverty is over.

All these factors should favour the FSLN, hence the US government's aggressive desperation to intervene and avoid a victory for Daniel Ortega. But it will not be enough simply to block Ortega. To win decisively in Nicaragua, the US has to ensure a heavy defeat for the FSLN in the legislative elections which will take place simultaneously with the presidential elections, As in El Salvador with the FMLN, that is something out of their reach. Already this year's electoral campaigning in Nicaragua is marking another steady downward ratchet in the United States' imperial decline.