Nicaraguans deserve credit for seeing through the changed stripes on the Sandinista tiger this week. Despite drastic changes in the formerly hard-line policies of that Marxist party, voters again decided for the conservative, free-market alternative.
Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega was disputing early returns, claiming election fraud. But if the results, being observed by former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, hold, the rest of the world should learn from this example. An electorate with a long memory is a strong hedge against future abuses.Ortega tried to change his party's philosophy from one that embraced a Marxist, central-planning ideology to one that embraces free-market principles and individual liberties. No doubt many voters had trouble separating those promises from the memories of the last Sandinista regime, which left power in 1990.
In those days, the Sandinistas waged war against free religion, the United States and free enterprise. They took an economy in which seven cordobas equalled one dollar and inflated it to the point where it took 25,000 cordobas to equal a dollar. They killed newspaper publisher Pedro Joaquin Chamorro, an act so outrageous to most Nicaraguans they elected his widow to succeed the Sandinistas.
No wonder Nicaraguans didn't want to give this party a second chance.
If the election results hold, Arnoldo Aleman would be the country's new president. He is a former farmer who entered politics to fight the Marxists who had confiscated his fields. He has offered to work with the Sandinistas to bring about a free and prosperous society. His first challenge would be to figure out who has title to the land the Sandinistas confiscated years ago.
By all indications, he represents the nation's best hope for a prosperous future.