Replies

"He's BAAAAAAACK!"

Thank you for the ping cgk.

Yes; Ortega AND the Sandinistas are back, a development I view with great dismay. And Oliver North is correct that the problem lies with the division of their opposition among themselves. If you look at the opinion poll results you can combine the support for Ortega (hard left), Jarquin (center left), and Pastora (national left) vote to come up with 48%, which indicates that overall, Nicaragua is almost split 50 - 50. I have seen other opinion polls which put the left slightly lower in their overall popularity, my guess is that a slim majority of Nicaraguans oppose the left. But with all this in mind the last thing the opposition to the left can afford is to divide among themselves while the left unites against them. This is what happened in Venezuela, Argentina, and Chile and it appears that it may be about to come to pass in Nicaragua. And just to tell you how stupid the center-right opposition has been in this campaign, the biggest issue Rizo and Montealegre have raised with each other in television commercials is that one calls the other "ugly." I don't remember who says it about the other, but I saw the report on Univision; "don't vote for my opponent, he's ugly." I'm not kidding.

I note that North points out that the State Department seems to have bet on the wrong horse in backing Montealegre. I agree with that. The role of the State Department should be in uniting the opposition to Ortega, instead we've involved ourselves in an attempt to help one side among the center-left opposition to Ortego dominate the other. It's a huge mistake in my opinion.

And just for a note, North writes that "Bolivian President Evo Morales, was barely in office two months before he re-wrote the country's constitution -- giving himself authoritarian powers." Technically this is not correct. Morales has called for a Constituent Assembly to rewrite Bolivia's constitution -- and the goal is to give him something approaching authoritarian powers -- but that assembly has not concluded its work. There is a major controversy surrounding it as Morales's MAS Party is attempting to force through a simple majority rule for the passage of proposed parts of the constitution, as opposed to the originally planned 2/3 vote, which has brought the assembly to a standstill, and the rest of Bolivia is uniting against MAS right now. That country might end up in civil war if the matter is not resolved.