Americas Features
Profile: Ortega from revolutionary to 'preacher'
By DPA
Nov 7, 2006, 19:00 GMT

Managua - In the 1980s Daniel Ortega became famous around the world as the radical leader of the Sandinista Revolution, which fought the US-sponsored Contras in a civil war that left more than 50,000 people dead in Nicaragua.

However, the leader of the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN), who was leading in the Central American country's presidential election on Monday, is no longer the young commander who attempted to lead Nicaragua's communist revolution.

Ortega, who will turn 61 on Saturday, first led the Central American country as a member of a five-member Junta beginning in 1979, after the Sandinistas brought down the bloody dictatorship of the Somoza family that had ruled the country for close to 50 years.

He became president in 1985, and served a stormy term with Nicaragua torn by civil war pitting the Marxist Sandinistas against the right-wing Contras.

Sixteen years after Ortega lost power at the hands of an anti- Sandinista coalition led by Violeta Barrios de Chamorro, and although he has become a moderate left-wing politician, the United States again decidedly took sides with his opponents.

Washington officials have made no secret of their dislike for Ortega and have warned that bilateral relations may suffer if he wins the election, while Republican Congressman Dana Rohrabacher went as far as to call for a new economic embargo on the Central American country.

However, now moderate Ortega has moved his message away from Marxist rhetoric and has assumed a tone that could come from the Catholic Church. Like the late Pope John Paul II he wants to fight the aggressive form of capitalism that is known as neoliberalism in Latin America.

'Give me the chance to govern, and I will solve your problems, with God's help,' Ortega said on the campaign trail, as he accused Nicaragua's conservative governments of not doing enough to defeat poverty in the country.

Ortega was born on November 11, 1945 in the central Nicaraguan town of La Libertad, in the province of Chontales. He studied law at a Jesuit university before joining in the Sandinistas in fighting against the dictatorship of the Somoza family during the 1970s.

After his 1985-90 presidential term, Ortega was unsuccessful three times in running for president. In the late 1990s his stepdaughter accused him of sexual abuse and his political career seemed to be over.

Dissidents split away from the FSLN, albeit not so much over the scandal as over its leader's transformation from a guerrilla commander into a preacher.

However, Ortega appeared ready to show his great resilience as a political leader, with a comeback - possibly even in the first round of voting - that would give him the chance to govern the country in peacetime.