KAFKA IN MANAGUA: Ollie North Is Helping A Communist Win In Nicaragua

Franz Kafka couldn't make this up.  Ollie North is doing his best to see that his Sandinista foe, Daniel Ortega, responsible for the Communist tyranny in the 1980s that took so many lives of his (and my) Contra friends, will be elected president of Nicaragua this Sunday, November 5th.

He's not doing it on purpose.  Just like Democrats who are so filled with Bush-hatred they will support anything that hurts Bush even if it hurts America, Ollie is so filled with State Department-hatred that it is blinding him to what he is doing.

I know it's hard to believe – and that Foggy Bottom has gotten something right for once adds to the Kafkaesque weirdness.

The story begins in 1997 when the mayor of Managua, Arnoldo Aleman, was elected president with a strong anti-Sandinista platform.  He turned out to be the greatest crook Nicaragua had ever seen, personally embezzling over $100 million from his poverty-stricken country.

As the evidence against him mounted, Aleman made a deal known as El Pacto (the pact) with Ortega and the Sandinistas, giving them control over the courts and a number of government agencies in exchange for protecting him from prosecution.

It worked until the evidence reached Everest, and he was sentenced, in December 2003, to a 20 year prison term – which he is serving, thanks to his Sandinista buddies in the courts, on his private ranch for "health reasons."

Aleman's political party is the PLC (Constitutional Liberal Party), which he continues to run from his ranch.  Breaking with the PLC in protest over Aleman's control of it was Aleman's foreign minister and finance minister for his PLC successor (current president Enrique Bolaños), Eduardo Montealegre.

A Harvard MBA and successful businessman, Montealegre last year founded the Nicaraguan Liberal Alliance Party (ALN-PC, an alliance between PLC dissidents, several liberal parties and the Conservative Party) as an alternative to the PLC and the Sandinistas.  Under this banner, he is running against Danny Ortega for president.

But Ollie North is not supporting Montealegre, whom Reagan Ambassador Jeanne Kirkpatrick describes as "decent, conservative, ethical, and pro-American."  Ollie is instead supporting the PLC candidate, Jose Rizo, whom Kirkpatrick describes as an "Aleman crony."

Why would Ollie do this?  Why would he travel to Managua last week to campaign for Aleman's puppet Rizo, to campaign in effect for the El Pacto, to make every effort to split the strong anti-Sandinista vote guaranteeing Ortega's victory?

Because Montealegre is being supported by the State Department and US Ambassador to Nicaragua, Paul Trivelli.

The latest October polls all show Ortega in front, Montealegre second, Rizo third (e.g., Gallup: 32.5%, 21.1%, 16.8%).  The Aleman-Ortega Pacto re-rigged the election rules so that whoever gets 35% or more of the vote (plus leads the nearest competitor by 5%) wins the presidency.  Divide and conquer.

Hugo Chavez is pouring millions into supporting Ortega, just as Ortega was supported by Castro and the Soviets in the 1980s.  Yet clearly, if Ollie – who remains a hero to many for his work with the Contras – were not doing his best to confuse Nicaraguans with his support of Rizo and split the anti-Sandinista vote, that vote would defeat Ortega.

So we get Kafka in Managua:  Ollie North would rather have a Communist win in Nicaragua than the US State Department.

I trekked through the jungle with the Contras, got into their firefights with the Piricuacos – the Contras' term for the Sandinistas who were so tyrannically vicious they were "dogs out for blood" – and had my life saved by them during a Sandinista ambush.

I learned first hand that the Contra rebellion was a genuine peasant revolt against a Marxist-Communist dictatorship.  That the most famous supporter of that rebellion may enable that dictatorship back into power is a tragic irony.