Nicaragua's President Ortega

By James M. Roberts

The Heritage Foundation | 1/18/2008

Marketing himself as a completely redesigned 2007 model, with sleek new lines and reassuring sound bites, Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega persuaded 38 percent of Nicaraguan voters to elect him president in November 2006 on his third try since leaving office in 1990. Ortega, now 62, assumed the presidency for the second time in January 2007. As he approaches the first anniversary of his inauguration, however, many design flaws in the clunky 1979 model Ortega are beginning to manifest themselves again.

Across South America, a number of countries are backsliding into a variety of long-discredited socialist models. In some cases, countries are being ruled by despotic hard-leftist and populist caudillos (strong­men). The leaders of this resurgent Latin leftist wave generally fall into two camps: "vegetarian" democratic socialists, who see the many benefits of capitalism and are willing to work within the market-based eco­nomic system to create good and sustainable private-sector jobs, and "carnivorous" hard-left socialists (e.g., Fidel Castro and Hugo Chávez), who oppose the U.S. and appear determined to tear apart market-based democratic capitalism and replace it with a form of "neo-communism."

Daniel Ortega certainly has a carnivorous pedi­gree.