Turning to the Voters in Nicaragua

...Yet the Sandinistas' strongest draw with the populace has always been anti-imperialism and the defense of national sovereignty...

...But she shows up everywhere, including the most rural villages, smiles and says a few words...

...They may be right: With the exception of Cuba, where the beneficiary has usually been the State, no country in Latin America has ever redistributed a greater percentage of its land than Revolutionary Nicaragua...

...Although a large majority of the Nicaraguans one speaks to predict the Sandinista slate will win, practically everyone agrees that anything can happen between now and election day...

...This uncertainty is reflected in the findings of the National Institute of Public Opinion (mop), a government agency reputed to possess the requisite autonomy and competence to conduct reliable research...

...At times she has gone so far as to imply that she would follow Costa Rica's example and abolish the military altogether...

...Would the Sandinistas actually step aside...

...The commandantes cannot help wondering if they are in danger of losing overnight the power that eight years of war could not wrest from them...

...But President Bush is not biting...

...Indeed, after last October's conference of leaders of the Western Hemisphere in San José, Costa Rica, a joke that swept through Managua had Violeta not washing her face for a week because George Bush had given her a soft kiss on the cheek...

...It has contracted by a third under their tenure, so that Nicaragua is now poorer than Haiti...

...responsible, 24 per cent blamed the Sandinistas, 23 per cent blamed both, and 14 per cent declined to give an opinion...

...Nicaraguans are right: The next few months are critical...

...It is impossible to discern voting trends from the crowds the two candidates have been attracting, because many in attendance are simply curious...

...That promise, though, is an anomaly...

...That nearly half of the respondents were either undecided or reluctant to express their preference is a source of endless speculation in Managua...

...An UNO victory would entrust the presidency to Violeta Chamorro, widow of the esteemed La Prensa publisher whose assassination by Anastasio Somoza Debayle's henchmen in 1978 sparked the uprising that swept the Sandinistas into power...

...But the months after the election will be critical, too—no matter who wins...

...Thus, for most people, the disastrous state of the economy is the decisive election issue...

...Moreover, Nicaragua's allimportant Scandinavian donors would probably be unforgiving if the election were called off...

...Taken together, these sets of responses suggest that the large block refusing to choose either Ortega or Chamorro is genuinely undecided, rather than afraid to speak its mind to a pollster...

...Ortega is counting on the kind of evaluation one young secretary made to me: "It is impossible to live with prices going up to the clouds...

...Theregime's paper, Barricada, has printed pictures of him with babies, farmers, foreign leaders and, on one occasion, abaseball glove...

...His cadres are busy hanging banners and mounting a house-to-house effort to make their pitch...

...or the contras...

...In the 1984 elections, as the Sandinistas are uneasily aware, rural Nicaraguans gave them a lower percentage of their votes than did their urban brethren...

...were reengaged in the war...

...WOOING THE UNDECIDED Turning to the Voters in Nicargua BY FORREST D. COLBURN Since their Revolution a decade ago, Nicaraguans have on numerous occasions said "The next few months are critical...

...For whom are those who refuse to declare themselves likely to vote...

...The opinions of the overwhelmingly impoverished Nicaraguans are unpredictable...

...In addition to its nationalism, the regime's persistent attacks on the privileges and property of the upper class have long been popular...

...Forrest D. Colburn, a previous contributor to The New Leader, teaches politics at Princeton University...

...More important, they say, among the majority of Nicaraguans she suffers the stigma of being part of the ancien régime...

...Her family newspaper has consistently belittled the Revolution...

...Still widely read, the daily, which had deteriorated over the last few years, has been spruced up to promote Chamorro...

...Most Nicaraguans sympathize with the Leftist rebels there...

...Perhaps the biggest unknown at the moment is whether the sympathies of the impoverished rural population will lie with the Sandinistas or UNO...

...They have been the doormat of the contra and Sandinista forces, they have been subjected to price controls on their harvests, and they have had to contend with unwelcome efforts to organize cooperatives...

...The Sandinistas would have an extended lease on power, but the economy cannot bear many more Revolutionary policies...

...They point to her lack of a program and her inept speechmaking...

...Of course, the gambit would be more effective if the U.S...

...Private conversations produce no apparent pattern, even on the basis of age, sex or occupation...

...Less attention has been paid to the other results of MOP'S latest sampling, but they are in several respects quite revealing...

...Despite their all-out drive, privately the Sandinistas insist they are not worried about Chamorro...

...it has never criticized either the U.S...

...In Managua the hunch is that they would turn over the presidency and the elephantine bureaucracy to UNO but retain control of the Army...

...One sign along Managua's By-Pass declares that if Ortega prevails the economy will grow by 5 per cent annually...

...The most serious challenge to President Daniel Ortega's bid for re-election comes from the United Nicaraguan Opposition (UNO...

...Exports, meanwhile, hit an all-time low of $213 million...

...If the Sandinistas managed to win in February, they would enjoy a surge in legitimacy both at home and abroad...

...The most common claim is merely that Nicaragua will move ade/ante (forward...

...With the war resumed, they can work at recapturing the high ground in the campaign by appealing to patriotism: Barricada has been printing photographs of a vigilant Ortega astride a military jeep at the front, clutching an AK-47...

...A recent front page featured a large photo of a young Sandinista soldier saluting the UNO candidate...

...Such queries goad the opposition and make the Sandinistas very nervous...

...After a Chamorro rally in the border town of Jalapa was brought to an end by a rock-throwing melee that broke out among youths in the audience, those involved proved to be politically indistinguishable from one another...

...That seems unlikely...

...Today they are saying the same thing again, but this time they may be right: The elections scheduled for February 25 will be a national referendum on Sandinista rule— and internationally will be seen as a test of its legitimacy...

...His new book, Managing the Commanding Heights: Nicaragua's State Enterprises, will be published next spring...

...The regime's standing elsewhere, too, would collapse...

...An agricultural laborer I talked to about the upcoming balloting saidangrily, "Quese vaya esagente para que sea comida" ("Get rid of these people [the Sandinistas] so there will be food...

...Some observers, especially in the opposition, believe Ortega and the other commandantes will find a pretext to cancel the voting...

...Internationally, the action has been portrayed as an inexplicable blunder...

...It is no doubt true that far more than Chamorro, what the Sandinistas fear is themselves—in particular, their dismal managementof the economy...

...Exactly what the Sandinistas themselves have to offer is not made clear...

...Nevertheless, Nicaraguan peasants have arguably borne the highest cost of the Revolution...

...It does not automatically follow, though, that their winning an open, competitive election would bring a cornucopia of foreign aid...

...Chamorro has made one specific campaign promise: to end the military draft and sharply reduce the size of the Army...

...4 per cent claimed they would not cast ballots...

...Many here believe that despite the alarming disintegration of the economy, the Sandinistas sincerely want a better life for all Nicaraguans...

...Last year inflation reached 36,000 per cent and the Gross National Product registered a decline of 8 per cent, the largest since 1979...

...Nearly 90 per cent of the country's 1.97 million voters are registered, the campaign is in full swing, UN observers and their white jeeps are already in place, and the whole world is watching...

...The Sandinistas maintain that thengreatest achievement has been the redistribution of land to the rural poor...

...Many Nicaraguans have difficulty scraping together two meals a day, or in some cases one...

...Laborers in the countryside typically keep their thoughts to themselves—in accordance with the Nicaraguan adage, "Flies do not enter a closed mouth...

...The largest block, 46 per cent, fell into the category no sabe-no respondió (don't know or prefer not to respond...

...President Bush surely would not be inspired to offer assistance...

...Chamorro would then be in a position similar to that of Chile's President Salvador Allende, who faced a hostile military when he was elected in 1970, and three years later was disposed of in a bloody coup d'état...

...It is likely that, if elected, she would give freer rein to market activity and the private sector, and improve relations with the United States...

...With such different major candidates, how could anyone not already have decided for one or the other...

...At present it is as much an election broadsheet as a newspaper...

...But the Sandinistas are the only government that has ever cared for the poor...

...When asked if Nicaragua's economic crisis was caused by U.S...

...Chamorro is not an effective speaker and lacks a detailed program...

...Another 2 per cent went to minor standard bearers...

...A new round of polls in September and October gaveher21 percent, and Ortega only 26 per cent...

...Recent quarrels with El Salvador's conservative President Alfredo Cristiani, on the other hand, have been helpful...

...Ortega's strategy focuses on deriding Chamorro as a member of the bourgeoisie, a friend of the counterrevolution and a pawn of the U. S. Her election, he says, would offer nothing but a reversal of the Revolution, including the seizure of land that has been redistributed to tens of thousands of peasant families...

...Neighboring Costa Rica, smaller in area and population, has annual exports of $1.1 billion...

...Ortega has switched from glasses to contact lenses and taken to adorning his military uniform with the red and black bandanna emblematic of the Sandinistas...

...The Sandinista campaign is multifaceted...

...Daniel por Presidente T-shirts have been distributed to the faithful...

...How many are in the former group and how many in the latter...

...It is in light of such popular resentment that pundits in Nicaragua see Ortega's November 1 decision to end the 19-month cease-fire with the contras as a shrewd tactic designed to take the economy of f the election's front burner...

...The tendency of the contras to run instead of fight also weakens somewhat the political usefulness of the conflict...

...When asked to evaluate Ortega's performance as President, 13 per cent said it has been excellent, 30 good, 29 average, 11 bad, 11 terrible, and 6 per cent offered no opinion...

...Public works bureaucracies are unusually busy paving streets and the like...

...It denounces the Sandinistas, covers the crumbled Nicaraguan economy in great detail, and purposefully reports current events in Eastern Europe...

...In polls taken last May and July, a mere 4-6 per cent of the participants supported Chamorro...

...The implementation of an austerity program has markedly reduced inflation this year, but it has further depressed the economy...

...No such Nicaraguan exists...

...The incumbent is highly visible, delivering speeches and pressing flesh...

...When asked who they thought would win the elections, 41 per cent of those polled said Ortega, 21 per cent Chamorrò, and 37 per cent said they didn't know or care to respond...

...Another nail would be driven into the coffin of the contras...

...And while the Sandinistas have a virtual monopoly on radio and television, UNO has La Prensa...

...The Sandinistas know no one will vote for them because they have improved his material standard of living...

...If Chamorro were to win, there might well be a bounty of aid, most prominently from the "Colossus to the North...

...aggression or Sandinista policies, 38 per cent held the U.S...

...All one can say with certainty is that what remains of the upper and middle classes favors Chamorro...

...The Sandinistas, in any case, hope the people will vote with their hearts and not their stomachs...

...In these circumstances it is not surprising that Ortega and Chamorro are running hard, as if the outcome of the election really depended on their campaigns...