TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/031290/0312106.000

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                                                                                NATION, Page 16

After the Revolution


The Sandinistas may be down, but they're still not out of power

By JILL SMOLOWE -- Reported by Jan Howard and John Moody/Managua


    At Sandinista headquarters, as the uneasy rumors of defeat
hardened into certainty, several party officials violated the
election-day ban on alcohol and generously sampled rum. On the
other side of Managua, it was well past midnight before Violeta
Barrios de Chamorro was finally convinced of her upset victory.
As the news sank in, Chamorro's perpetually smiling face clouded
with worry. Would the Sandinistas accept the people's verdict?
Rising from her wheelchair and perching carefully to favor her
right knee, broken in a fall in January, Chamorro gestured for
silence among the 100 people gathered in her spacious living
room. Then she began reciting the Hail Mary. "God bless
Nicaragua," she concluded, her voice choked with emotion.

    A moment later, former U.S. President Jimmy Carter arrived
with word that President Daniel Ortega Saavedra was willing to
concede defeat. Was Dona Violeta prepared to claim victory?
"Si," quickly answered Virgilio Godoy, her assertive running
mate. For an embarrassing moment, Chamorro stared at Godoy. Then
she replied, "I am ready."

    After Chamorro's decisive showing, winning 55% of the vote
to Ortega's 41%, claiming victory was the easy part. A harder
question is whether the politically unseasoned Chamorro, 60, is
prepared to guide bankrupt Nicaragua through the difficult
transition from a revolutionary state to a functioning
multiparty democracy. The answer will hinge largely on whether
the Sandinistas live up to their promises to relinquish power
peacefully after ten years of rule largely by proclamation,
military muscle and caprice. Given Nicaragua's history of never
managing a change of government without bloodshed, the odds seem
stacked against Chamorro. Adding to her problems is the
fractious 14-party coalition, ranging ideologically from
conservative to Communist, that the President-elect heads. The
parties' glue, a common antipathy toward the Sandinistas, may
not be strong enough to keep them together. Chamorro must also
ensure the retirement of the 15,000 U.S.-backed contras if she
hopes to restore peace.

    Wisely, Chamorro's first impulse was to strike a note of
reconciliation. "There were no winners or losers in these
elections," she told Ortega when the two met at her home the
evening after the vote. Chamorro pressed a similar message in
her victory speech. "This is an election that will never have
exiles or political prisoners or confiscations," she said.
Initially Ortega added to the aura of reconciliation with a
graciousness that impressed even his harshest critics. In his
concession statement, he hailed the "clean and pure electoral
process" and pledged to "respect and obey the popular mandate."

    But as the first shock of the Sandinista defeat wore off,
Nicaragua's fault lines reemerged. Within a day of the
elections, scattered incidents of violence erupted in Managua
and rural towns as Chamorro and Ortega supporters clashed. By
Tuesday Ortega was sounding like his usual defiant self. At a
public rally, he roared, "They want the government. We give it
to them. We will rule from below." A peaceful transition, he
cautioned, required the immediate demobilization of the
contras. Warning that "the change of government by no means
signifies the end of the revolution," Ortega was deliberately
vague about the future role of the 70,000-strong army and the
untold number of Interior Ministry security forces.

    It was unclear whether Ortega was merely posturing to
placate his more hard-line followers -- or issuing an ultimatum.
Chamorro did not wait to find out. She joined Ortega's call for
the contras to lay down their weapons. "The causes of civil war
in Nicaragua have disappeared," she said. The next day Ortega
returned to a more conciliatory tone, this time announcing the
renewal of a cease-fire that he had unilaterally suspended last
November. At the same time, he called on the U.S. to pay for the
prompt demobilization and relocation of the contras, 10,000 of
whom remain in Honduras. Not to be upstaged, Chamorro announced
that the Sandinistas would have to "turn over everything" to
her, including the armed forces. "I will be running the
country," she declared somewhat testily.

    As the dueling rhetoric suggests, Chamorro's first
challenge will be to establish her authority. Given the failure
of most pollsters to chart voter sentiment accurately -- Ortega
was so confident of victory that just two days before the
balloting he said, "There is not even a hypothetical possibility
that the [opposition] could  win" -- it is difficult to know
precisely why Chamorro triumphed. Possibly the vote was an
endorsement of her calls to abolish the military draft,
establish peace and allow private enterprise to flourish -- the
mainstay of her ill-conceived, disorganized campaign. It seems
just as likely, however, that the vote was not so much for
Chamorro as against the Sandinistas. Finding Nicaragua's
economic and political conditions revolting, voters may simply
have revolted with their ballots. If so, Chamorro may find her
mandate slipping fast if she fails to move quickly on four
fronts:

    THE ECONOMY

    Chamorro's economic advisers aim to decentralize by
establishing private savings institutions and liberating coffee
and cotton growers from state controls to seek higher prices for
their crops. But Ortega warned that his party will resist any
attempt to roll back such Sandinista policies as agrarian reform
and the nationalization of the country's banks.

    Last week Chamorro aides said the new government would move
quickly to sell many of the large state enterprises established
by the Sandinistas. Such a policy could affect confiscated sugar
mills and textile factories as well as grain interests.
Chamorro's coalition, the National Opposition Union (U.N.O.),
has pledged, however, not to take back the thousands of homes,
farms and businesses seized and nationalized by the
Sandinistas. Instead, peasants will be permitted to keep the
land that was parceled out to them, and the former owners will
be compensated for their losses.

    The plan aims not only to mollify the 120,000 peasants who
have been given land titles by the Sandinistas but also to
reassure Ortega and the other comandantes who have made their
homes in some of Managua's finest houses. Plainly Chamorro wants
to drive home her message that the Sandinistas will not be
punished for their ten years of inept rule.

    But she is not assured of cooperation from her coalition
and supporters. Some U.N.O. members feel that Chamorro relies
too heavily on a small coterie of advisers, most of whom enjoy
connections with her family, and not enough on the leaders of
the various parties. Still others are less inclined to be as
charitable as Chamorro: last week, overheated U.N.O. supporters
descended on a cooperative in Ticuantepe, 15 miles south of
Managua, and ordered the farmers to vacate the property.

    THE ARMED FORCES

    Chamorro's campaign pledges include cutting back the
military and ending the unpopular draft. But coming into the
election, there were concerns in the U.N.O. camp that Defense
Minister Humberto Ortega, Daniel's brother, might resist
stepping down if the Sandinistas were defeated. On Tuesday Jimmy
Carter reported that General Ortega had agreed to give up his
post. At week's end Paul Reichler, a U.S. attorney who
represents the Sandinistas, said that Humberto would take a
party job, while Daniel would take a legislative seat as leader
of the opposition.

    In a surprising gesture, the Cubans let it be known that
all their military advisers are being recalled well in advance
of their scheduled departure date sometime next year. The last
of the advisers will return home this week. While the
development seems promising, last week zealous Sandinistas began
passing out guns in the city of Matagalpa to loyalists who
agreed to enroll in the sinister-sounding Commandos of Popular
Action. One man told TIME that he had been given a Soviet-made
automatic rifle and 300 rounds of ammunition.

    The Interior Ministry's state-security apparatus could also
unhinge Chamorro's plans. A week before the elections, Interior
Minister Tomas Borge Martinez, perhaps the most hard-line member
of the Sandinista junta, declared that his subordinates would
never submit to the command of U.N.O. Last week, however,
Reichler said that Borge too would now work a party job. Borge
himself told TIME, "We were looking at the situation then from a
triumphant point of view. Now we have to face reality. We'll
have to submit ourselves to the new game rules."

    THE CONTRAS

    Those new rules apply, as Daniel Ortega warned, only if the
contras first demobilize. Despite appeals from both Ortega and
Chamorro to lay down their weapons and a clear warning from U.S.
Secretary of State James Baker that "the war is over," the
contras have yet to agree to disarm while the Sandinista army
remains at full strength. Last week Israel Galeano, known as
Comandante Franklin, who heads the six-man contra command, went
only so far as to order his few thousand troops inside Nicaragua
to avoid combat at all costs.

    Rafael Leonardo Callejas, Honduras' newly elected
President, called upon the 10,000 contras in their Honduran base
camps to leave as soon as possible. The contras have ignored
such calls in the past. The Tela accord, signed by the five
Central American Presidents last August, called for the contras
to demobilize within four months. One sticking point is that if
the contra leaders agree to surrender their troops and weapons,
they will lose their jobs and salaries. Were Chamorro to offer
some of the rebels a place in her government, the contras might
be appeased, but such a move would also anger the Sandinistas
and possibly undo the delicate transition process. When the
contra chiefs sought a meeting with U.N.O. leaders last week,
their bid went unanswered. Meanwhile, the U.S. Ambassador to
Honduras, Cresencio Arcos, met with contra leaders and urged a
quick demobilization.

    THE SANDINISTAS

    Because Chamorro's support is divided among 14 parties, the
Sandinista National Liberation Front remains the largest and
strongest political group in the country, with 38 of the 91
seats in the new Legislative Assembly. The U.N.O., which claimed
all but one of the remaining seats, can easily push through
bills that require only a majority vote, such as a move to
abolish the military draft. But for constitutional changes such
as redefining the role of the army, a 60% vote is required

Sandinista cooperation. For the Sandinistas, the challenge will
be to transform themselves from a revolutionary vanguard into a
more conventional opposition party.

    Such a scenario, of course, assumes that the negotiations
initiated last week by the Sandinistas and the U.N.O. coalition
will proceed smoothly, and that the Sandinistas will gracefully
surrender the power they gained with popular support in 1979.
That is an optimistic projection -- and a premature one. History
has few lessons to guide this transition; Nicaragua's is
believed to be the first revolutionary national government ever
to be voted out of power in free elections. Even assuming the
best of circumstances, U.N.O. leaders caution against inflated
expectations. "There is hunger in this country, there is
sickness and no medicine, and most of all, there is no sign of
hope," says Luis Sanchez, one of the U.N.O.'s inner circle. "We
will lead the way to recuperation, perhaps not to plenty, but
out of poverty."

    It is a tall order for Chamorro, who once accurately
described herself as a "symbol." Now that she embodies her
country's hopes for economic and political recovery, she must
also demonstrate that she is a leader.