After The Revolution

By Jill Smolowe

At Sandinista headquarters, as the uneasy rumors of defeat hardened into certainty, several party officials violated the election-day ban on alcohol and generously sampled rum. On the other side of Managua, it was well past midnight before Violeta Barrios de Chamorro was finally convinced of her upset victory. As the news sank in, Chamorro's perpetually smiling face clouded with worry. Would the Sandinistas accept the people's verdict? Rising from her wheelchair and perching carefully to favor her right knee, broken in a fall in January, Chamorro gestured for silence among the 100 people gathered in her spacious living room. Then she began reciting the Hail Mary. "God bless Nicaragua," she concluded, her voice choked with emotion.

A moment later, former U.S. President Jimmy Carter arrived with word that President Daniel Ortega Saavedra was willing to concede defeat. Was Dona Violeta prepared to claim victory? "Si," quickly answered Virgilio Godoy, her assertive running mate. For an embarrassing moment, Chamorro stared at Godoy. Then she replied, "I am ready."

After Chamorro's decisive showing, winning 55% of the vote to Ortega's 41%, claiming victory was the easy part. A harder question is whether the politically unseasoned Chamorro, 60, is prepared to guide bankrupt Nicaragua through the difficult transition from a revolutionary state to a functioning multiparty democracy. The answer will hinge largely on whether the Sandinistas live up to their promises to relinquish power peacefully after ten years of rule largely by proclamation, military muscle and caprice. Given Nicaragua's history of never managing a change of government without bloodshed, the odds seem stacked against Chamorro. Adding to her problems is the fractious 14- party coalition, ranging ideologically from conservative to Communist, that the President-elect heads. The parties' glue, a common antipathy toward the Sandinistas, may not be strong enough to keep them together. Chamorro must also ensure the retirement of the 15,000 U.S.-backed contras if she hopes to restore peace.

Wisely, Chamorro's first impulse was to strike a note of reconciliation. "There were no winners or losers in these elections," she told Ortega when the two met at her home the evening after the vote. Chamorro pressed a similar message in her victory speech. "This is an election that will never have exiles or political prisoners or confiscations," she said. Initially Ortega added to the aura of reconciliation with a graciousness that impressed even his harshest critics. In his concession statement, he hailed the "clean and pure electoral process" and pledged to "respect and obey the popular mandate."

But as the first shock of the Sandinista defeat wore off, Nicaragua's fault lines reemerged. Within a day of the elections, scattered incidents of violence erupted in Managua and rural towns as Chamorro and Ortega supporters clashed. By Tuesday Ortega was sounding like his usual defiant self. At a public rally, he roared, "They want the government. We give it to them. We will rule from below." A peaceful transition, he cautioned, required the immediate demobilization of the contras. Warning that "the change of government by no means signifies the end of the revolution," Ortega was deliberately vague about the future role of the 70,000-strong army and the untold number of Interior Ministry security forces.

It was unclear whether Ortega was merely posturing to placate his more hard- line followers -- or issuing an ultimatum. Chamorro did not wait to find out. She joined Ortega's call for the contras to lay down their weapons. "The causes of civil war in Nicaragua have disappeared," she said. The next day Ortega returned to a more conciliatory tone, this time announcing the renewal of a cease-fire that he had unilaterally suspended last November. At the same time, he called on the U.S. to pay for the prompt demobilization and relocation of the contras, 10,000 of whom remain in Honduras. Not to be upstaged, Chamorro announced that the Sandinistas would have to "turn over everything" to her, including the armed forces. "I will be running the country," she declared somewhat testily.

As the dueling rhetoric suggests, Chamorro's first challenge will be to establish her authority. Given the failure of most pollsters to chart voter sentiment accurately -- Ortega was so confident of victory that just two days before the balloting he said, "There is not even a hypothetical possibility that the ((opposition)) could win" -- it is difficult to know precisely why Chamorro triumphed. Possibly the vote was an endorsement of her calls to abolish the military draft, establish peace and allow private enterprise to flourish -- the mainstay of her ill-conceived, disorganized campaign. It seems just as likely, however, that the vote was not so much for Chamorro as against the Sandinistas. Finding Nicaragua's economic and political conditions revolting, voters may simply have revolted with their ballots. If so, Chamorro may find her mandate slipping fast if she fails to move quickly on four fronts:

THE ECONOMY

Chamorro's economic advisers aim to decentralize by establishing private savings institutions and liberating coffee and cotton growers from state controls to seek higher prices for their crops. But Ortega warned that his party will resist any attempt to roll back such Sandinista policies as agrarian reform and the nationalization of the country's banks.

Last week Chamorro aides said the new government would move quickly to sell many of the large state enterprises established by the Sandinistas. Such a policy could affect confiscated sugar mills and textile factories as well as grain interests. Chamorro's coalition, the National Opposition Union (U.N.O.), has pledged, however, not to take back the thousands of homes, farms and businesses seized and nationalized by the Sandinistas. Instead, peasants will be permitted to keep the land that was parceled out to them, and the former owners will be compensated for their losses.

The plan aims not only to mollify the 120,000 peasants who have been given land titles by the Sandinistas but also to reassure Ortega and the other comandantes who have made their homes in some of Managua's finest houses. Plainly Chamorro wants to drive home her message that the Sandinistas will not be punished for their ten years of inept rule.

But she is not assured of cooperation from her coalition and supporters. Some U.N.O. members feel that Chamorro relies too heavily on a small coterie of advisers, most of whom enjoy connections with her family, and not enough on the leaders of the various parties. Still others are less inclined to be as charitable as Chamorro: last week, overheated U.N.O. supporters descended on a cooperative in Ticuantepe, 15 miles south of Managua, and ordered the farmers to vacate the property.

THE ARMED FORCES

Chamorro's campaign pledges include cutting back the military and ending the unpopular draft. But coming into the election, there were concerns in the U.N.O. camp that Defense Minister Humberto Ortega, Daniel's brother, might resist stepping down if the Sandinistas were defeated. On Tuesday Jimmy Carter reported that General Ortega had agreed to give up his post. At week's end Paul Reichler, a U.S. attorney who represents the Sandinistas, said that Humberto would take a party job, while Daniel would take a legislative seat as leader of the opposition.

In a surprising gesture, the Cubans let it be known that all their military advisers are being recalled well in advance of their scheduled departure date sometime next year. The last of the advisers will return home this week. While the development seems promising, last week zealous Sandinistas began passing out guns in the city of Matagalpa to loyalists who agreed to enroll in the sinister-sounding Commandos of Popular Action. One man told TIME that he had been given a Soviet-made automatic rifle and 300 rounds of ammunition.

The Interior Ministry's state-security apparatus could also unhinge Chamorro's plans. A week before the elections, Interior Minister Tomas Borge Martinez, perhaps the most hard-line member of the Sandinista junta, declared that his subordinates would never submit to the command of U.N.O. Last week, however, Reichler said that Borge too would now work a party job. Borge himself told TIME, "We were looking at the situation then from a triumphant point of view. Now we have to face reality. We'll have to submit ourselves to the new game rules."

THE CONTRAS

Those new rules apply, as Daniel Ortega warned, only if the contras first demobilize. Despite appeals from both Ortega and Chamorro to lay down their weapons and a clear warning from U.S. Secretary of State James Baker that "the war is over," the contras have yet to agree to disarm while the Sandinista army remains at full strength. Last week Israel Galeano, known as Comandante Franklin, who heads the six-man contra command, went only so far as to order his few thousand troops inside Nicaragua to avoid combat at all costs.

Rafael Leonardo Callejas, Honduras' newly elected President, called upon the 10,000 contras in their Honduran base camps to leave as soon as possible. The contras have ignored such calls in the past. The Tela accord, signed by the five Central American Presidents last August, called for the contras to demobilize within four months. One sticking point is that if the contra leaders agree to surrender their troops and weapons, they will lose their jobs and salaries. Were Chamorro to offer some of the rebels a place in her government, the contras might be appeased, but such a move would also anger the Sandinistas and possibly undo the delicate transition process. When the contra chiefs sought a meeting with U.N.O. leaders last week, their bid went unanswered. Meanwhile, the U.S. Ambassador to Honduras, Cresencio Arcos, met with contra leaders and urged a quick demobilization.

THE SANDINISTAS

Because Chamorro's support is divided among 14 parties, the Sandinista National Liberation Front remains the largest and strongest political group in the country, with 38 of the 91 seats in the new Legislative Assembly. The U.N.O., which claimed all but one of the remaining seats, can easily push through bills that require only a majority vote, such as a move to abolish the military draft. But for constitutional changes such as redefining the role of the army, a 60% vote is required -- a number that will be impossible to achieve without Sandinista cooperation. For the Sandinistas, the challenge will be to transform themselves from a revolutionary vanguard into a more conventional opposition party.

Such a scenario, of course, assumes that the negotiations initiated last week by the Sandinistas and the U.N.O. coalition will proceed smoothly, and that the Sandinistas will gracefully surrender the power they gained with popular support in 1979. That is an optimistic projection -- and a premature one. History has few lessons to guide this transition; Nicaragua's is believed to be the first revolutionary national government ever to be voted out of power in free elections. Even assuming the best of circumstances, U.N.O. leaders caution against inflated expectations. "There is hunger in this country, there is sickness and no medicine, and most of all, there is no sign of hope," says Luis Sanchez, one of the U.N.O.'s inner circle. "We will lead the way to recuperation, perhaps not to plenty, but out of poverty."

It is a tall order for Chamorro, who once accurately described herself as a "symbol." Now that she embodies her country's hopes for economic and political recovery, she must also demonstrate that she is a leader.

With reporting by Jan Howard and John Moody/Managua