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04/09/2006:

"Sandinistas eye return to power in Nicaragua"

LEON, Nicaragua (Reuters) -- After years of setbacks, many Nicaraguans from Leon, the cradle of the 1979 Sandinista revolution, believe their aging former guerrilla leaders could soon return to power in elections that also could prove a diplomatic nightmare for Washington.

"We need a change. It's been bad, bad, bad," said 60-year-old war Sandinista war veteran Daniel Sauro, referring to 16 years of pro-Washington governments that took power after Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega's electoral defeat in 1990.

Sauro lives in a city where colonial churches and dilapidated houses are still splattered with aging bullet holes from 1970s street battles between leftist rebels and the army.

"We need to give Ortega another chance to show he can govern in times of peace," Sauro said.

Like many Nicaraguans, he complains about crime, corruption and low wages and looks back with nostalgia to the heady revolutionary days of 1979.

The graying Ortega -- a Cold War U.S. foe and loser of the last three elections -- is a favorite to win a vote that could cement an emerging shift to the left in Latin America.

Leon was one of the first cities that leftist rebels occupied in the 1979 uprising and loyalty has stayed strong -- the town has always elected a Sandinista mayor despite a swing against the movement in much of Nicaragua.

But now national support for the Sandinistas, who in the 1980s led a Soviet- and Cuban-backed government that battled U.S.-funded Contra rebels, is returning to Nicaragua before presidential elections in November, pollsters say.

Many voters are tired of pro-Washington governments that have failed to raise living standards in one of the Western Hemisphere's poorest nations.
cnn.com