Nicaragua

Daniel Ortega has never been more possessed by a rip tide than since last year’s November elections projected him into the presidency of his poverty-stricken nation. But the electorate may not have been exactly certain if the man they were choosing to head the nation was or was not a man of Jesus or a passionate opponent of abortion or was prepared to seek out the overwhelming virtues of the private sector, or smoke the peace pipe with Uncle Sam, or give the back of the hand to Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez. In fact, rather than seeing a newly minted Daniel Ortega, the country seemed to be granted an older, more traditional version of Daniel Ontega, seasoned revolutionary.

It has been over seventeen years since the Frente Sandinista de Liberacion Nacional (FSLN) was tellingly voted out of office in Nicaragua. Now, what is the situation with the new FSLN government that rode into power in 2006 with only 39% of the vote, or 2% less than the vote that drove it from power in 1990? Are Nicaraguans witnessing another “revolution” like that when the Sandinistas swept into power in 1979?