MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Nicaragua votes today

Ortega, 60, who spent nearly a decade fighting US-backed Contra rebels, is the frontrunner in the race with four other candidates.

His goal today is to garner 35 percent of the vote and beat his main opponent, Harvard-educated banker Eduardo Montealegre 51, by five percentage points to avoid a runoff.

Presidential candidate Eduardo Montealegre's family lost nearly everything ? a bank, homes and tracts of land ? during the Sandinistas' widespread appropriation of private property in the 1980s. They were able to rebuild their lives after fleeing to Miami. But he hasn't forgotten what the Sandinistas took away from him, and he doesn't want his country to forget either.

The Sandinista leader spent this campaign preaching harmony, love and reconciliation, often with John Lennon's Give Peace a Chance playing in the background.

He was elected president at the age of 39 in 1984, five years after Somoza's ouster, as the country was in the middle of a war against Contra rebels financed and organized by Washington. Under Sandinista rule, the local currency devalued 33,000 percent and foreign debt ballooned to 12 billion dollars.

But before he lost the presidency to Violeta Chamorro in 1990, Ortega lowered illiteracy rates from 60 percent to 12 percent and built a free health care system.

Whatever the results, today's vote in the Western Hemisphere's second-poorest nation will send shockwaves throughout the region.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez is hoping to acquire an additional ally in Ortega, while the US wants a pro-business candidate who will maintain close ties and protect growing foreign investments.