While there have been many heartening openings toward freedom in Marxist-Leninist regimes this past year, surely one of the most stunning occurred in Nicaragua on February 25. On the day, Nicaraguan voters went to the polls in massive, unprecedented numbers; repudiated and ousted Daniel Ortega and the Sandinista government; and elected opposition leader Violeta Chamorro as president.
The opposition victory came as a surprise to nearly everyone. Most of the pre-election polls had predicted that the Sandinistas would win. After all, the Sandinistas controlled the jobs, the patronage, the television, the economy, as well as immense coercive power. Between the Sandinista party, the military and the militias, the public bureaucracy, and the Sandinista-controlled popular associations (for women, students, peasants, nearly everyone), the regime commanded at least one-third of the voters. So how could the Sandinistas lose?
Few thought the Sandinistas would blatantly rig the election or the ballot counting. Too many international observers would be on had for that. Instead, it was assumed that the "fix" (jobs, promises to the faithful, intimidation where necessary) would be on long before the observers got on the scene. Nor did the Sandinistas ever conceive that their own people would repudiate them. The Sandinistas did not hold this election to lose. But lose they did, on a massive scale.
Under Sandinista rule, the Nicaraguan economy went into a tailspin. Per capita income dropped steadily during the 1980's, until Nicaragua achieved the dubious distinction of nearly matching Haiti as the poorest, most miserable country in the Western Hemisphere. As the economy ran downhill, the regime's vaunted social programs in health, education, and agrarian reform also had to be curtailed. Misery spread - and so did disenchantment with the Sandinistas.
The causes of the regime's economic shortcomings have been variously described, depending on one's political point of view. The Sandinistas and their foreign supporters blame all the problems on the United States (for its imposition of economic sanctions) and the U.S. funded Contra war. The regime's foes blame it all on Sandinista incompetence and mismanagement. Actually, both sets of factors were critical. There is no doubt the sanctions and the Contra war hurt, and hurt badly. But incompetence on the part of Sandinista leaders who had never run an office before - let alone a government - was also a key element. The global recession of the early 1980s also hurt, as did continuing low world market prices for Nicaragua's export products.
U.S. POLICY
But how much was the United States involved? It was never as strongly supportive of the former Somoza regime as the Sandinistas and their supporters have often claimed. Nor was the United Sates initially hostile to the Sandinista revolution. In fact, the United States was still aiding Nicaragua when the regime became sharply more Marxist-Leninist and less pluralistic, abandoned democracy s its announced goal, and allied itself with Cuba and the Soviet Union. Because too many people believe exactly the opposite, it needs to be stated emphatically that the United States was not the cause of Nicaragua's revolution, nor was it U.S. policy that caused Nicaragua to veer off in a Marxist-Leninist
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