This Reuters article by Brian Ellsworth, a Venezuela-based correspondent, says that “Nicaraguan leftist president Daniel Ortega” had “cruised to a third consecutive election victory in November after a top court ruling ousted the leader of the main opposition party. That left Ortega running against a candidate widely seen as a shadow ally.”
I haven’t followed Nicaraguan politics very closely in recent years. When I read Ellworth’s article I immediately wondered on what grounds Ortega had challenged his rival’s right to run against him. I therefore researched a bit using Reuters’ website. Here are some facts I learned by reading Reuters articles (here, here and here) about that election.
The Supreme Court had ousted Eduardo Montealegre as leader of the PLI party but not at Ortega’s request as Ellsworth’s article led me to believe. It was done by a rival of Montealegre‘s within the PLI, Pedro Reyes. PLI members accused Ortega of having put Reyes up to it but Reuters provided no evidence for that theory beyond assertions by disgruntled PLI members. In fact, Reyes did not end up running against Ortega (as Ellsworth’s article also misled me into believing) because Reyes failed to get financing. Instead, the PLI, which was polling a pitiful 2% (so light years away from being serious contenders as Ellsworth’s article also failed to clarify), ended up nominating another guy who was trounced by Ortega.
Just as predicted by polls, Ortega won the elections by a truly massive landslide. Nicaragua has gone through five years of very rapid economic growth and poverty reduction. Ortega received 72.5% of the vote. The PLI candidate came in third with 4.5% of the vote.
Unless Reuters has some extremely compelling evidence which it hasn’t reported, the safest conclusion by far is that the PLI, a very unpopular party on the way to a huge defeat, self-destructed even further due to in-fighting. It then made allegations of a secret plot (conspiracy) against it that western journalists like Ellsberg are inclined to uncritically regurgitate against leftist governments in the region.
In the 1980s, the United States was able to wage a terrorist war that claimed 30,000 lives and impose crippling economic sanctions on Nicaragua thanks in very large part to dishonest reporting. Not nearly enough has changed since then.
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