MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Nicaragua: another tight and polarized election

Nicaraguan former president Daniel Ortega is the favourite in Sunday's national elections as he makes yet another bid for power 16 years after his first stormy presidency ended at the ballot box.

Ortega from the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) and faces a divided right-wing opposition in his fourth attempt to regain power in one of the poorest country's in the hemisphere.

Just days before the election, though, last-minute reports suggested that one of the leading candidates opposite Ortega might stand down in an effort to consolidate the liberal vote, a move that Washington had been pursuing unsuccessfully for months.

Opinion polls suggested that Ortega will win a first-round plurality of about a third, which would force a runoff election within 45 days with the second-place candidate. In Nicaragua, a presidential candidate needs more than 40% of the vote, or 35% with a 5-point advantage over the second-place candidate, to win outright in the first round.

Four coalitions and one political party are fielding candidates for the post that dissident liberal Enrique Bolaños has held since 2002. Public opinion polls suggest that right-wing former banker Eduardo Montealegre, 51, nominee of the dissident Nicaraguan Liberal Alliance (ALN) and a former minister for finance and foreign affairs, as Ortega's top competitor with about 25% support.

Jose Rizo, 62, candidate of the Liberal Constitutionalist Party (PLC) and a former vice president, was third with just under 20% according to opinion polls.

But as the campaign neared its official end Wednesday night, the PLC announced that Montealegre would stand down. The move could change the Nicaraguan electoral scenario dramatically, giving an anti-Sandinista bloc a chance of an outright first-round victory with Rizo.

However, it remains to be seen whether the profound rift within the conservative camp can be patched so quickly. The divisions arose as Bolaños turned his back on his fellow liberal and predecessor as president Arnoldo Aleman, who was eventually sentenced to 20 years in prison on corruption convictions and is currently under house arrest.

Around 3.6 million Nicaraguans over the age of 16 are eligible to vote Sunday. Besides president and vice president, they will also elect 90 members of the unicameral National Assembly and 20 representatives to the Central American Parliament.

Ortega was first president from 1985-90, as the country endured a civil war that pitted the Marxist Sandinistas against US-sponsored Contras, leaving more than 50,000 people dead. In 1990, Ortega was defeated when an anti-Sandinista alliance helped elect Violeta Barrios de Chamorro. Washington was heavily involved in the Nicaraguan conflict, claiming that the Sandinistas were aiding leftist rebels in El Salvador.

These elections are set to be the most closely scrutinized in Nicaraguan history, with more than 17,000 local and foreign observers including representatives of the Organization of American States (OAS), the European Union and the private Carter Centre. The winner is set to be inaugurated on January 10.

With a GDP of around 5 billion dollars, 80% of Nicaraguans live in poverty. According to official figures, Nicaragua gets around 1 billion dollars a year in remittances from expatriates working mainly in the US and Costa Rica - equal the country's total income from tourism and cash-crop exports of bananas, coffee and tobacco.

A victory by Ortega, who is supported by Cuba's Castro and Venezuela's Hugo Chavez, would spell a major turnaround in U.S.-Nicaragua relations, because the current government is very cooperative with Washington and in late 2005 ratified the US-Central America Free Trade Agreement, CAFTA.

Several US members of Congress have written to the State Department asking for a cut in all aid and remittances in the event of an Ortega victory.

US Secretary of Commerce has warned that if Ortega wins, the whole cooperation package with Nicaragua will be "reconsidered".

But the Sandinistas have learnt from history and bet on plurality: their vice president candidate is a former "contra" and they have garnered the support of the Catholic Church and Cardinal Obando y Obando, once their fieriest enemy, by openly supporting a ban on all forms of abortion, including therapeutic termination.