Ortega appears set for Nicaragua's presidency

Sunday night and Monday, Ortega supporters took to the streets, setting off celebratory fireworks and waving black-and-red flags of the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN), from the backs of pickup trucks.

Analysts say that Ortega would have a difficult run in a second round, since the vote between the two conservative candidates was split. Indeed many of those voting for Mr. Montealegre or José Rizo, the other conservative, who is currently in third place with 22.93 percent, say they felt more strongly about Ortega losing than their own candidate of choice winning.

"I wouldn't mind if this went into a second round, because it would mean Ortega wouldn't win," says Manuel Cabrera, an accountant in Managua who cast his ballot for runner-up Montealegre. "The US has helped us a lot, and we are going to continue needing their economic assistance. I'm afraid an Ortega victory will ruin those relationships. He will care more about Venezuela and Cuba, and not our friends who have helped us."

The race saw a huge voter turnout, at over 70 percent. But Montealegre said the celebrations were premature. "No one has won here," he said as initial results trickled in. "The Nicaraguan people, in a runoff, will determine the next president."

The US Embassy released a statement saying it was too soon to "make an overall judgment on the fairness and transparency of the process," it read. "We are receiving reports of some anomalies in the electoral process."

Some here say the election was unfair at the outset because Ortega helped to lower the threshold for victory from 45 to 35 percent, with a five-point difference between the two leading candidates. He pushed through electoral-law changes with former president Arnoldo Alemán, who is now serving a 20-year sentence for embezzlement. "That can only happen in a country run by two gangsters," says Otto Reich, who was a senior official in the Reagan administration when it backed the Contra rebels against Ortega. "Ortega was willing to throw his country to the wolves" in order to win the presidency.

The US was not shy about voicing its dissatisfaction with an Ortega win, saying that aid and investment were likely to wane if he were in power. Some here now wonder whether US threats to block remittances or rethink free-trade agreements backfired.

"For Washington, it's clear that a lot of bravado and warnings did not really pay off," says Michael Shifter, vice president for policy at the Inter-American Dialogue in Washington. If Ortega does emerge victorious, he says that "there is a lot of uncertainty about what direction he'll take. He is clearly an ally of Chávez, but what does that mean being the president of Nicaragua?"

Mr. Chávez sent fertilizer and cheap fuel to Nicaragua ahead of the election in what many claimed was a bid to bring voters into Ortega's fold, especially since Nicaragua has suffered an energy crisis in part because of the high cost of oil.

Ortega has promised to work with business leaders and has backed a trade deal with the US. He stopped short of claiming victory Monday night but said that, whoever wins, he's ready to work with other parties to "eradicate poverty and reassure the private sector and international investors."

• Ms. Llana is Latin America correspondent for the Monitor and USA Today.

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