BY FRANCES ROBLES

 MANAGUA -- It's too late for Nicaragua's Conservative Party to put up a new candidate for the November presidential race, the elections council announced Wednesday, delivering a blow to Sandinista Daniel Ortega, who sought to regain the seat he lost 11 years ago.

 Ortega has been running for president against two right-wing candidates, the Liberal Party's Enrique Bolaños and Conservative Party nominee Noel Vidaurre. Many
 anti-Sandinistas here -- and in Washington -- had urged the third-place Vidaurre to join the Liberals, saying his candidacy served only to split the right-wing vote and catapult Ortega back to power. The Sandinistas took power in 1979 and Ortega served as president from 1984 to 1990.

 Vidaurre steadfastly refused.

 ``I'd rather go home,'' he told The Herald Monday. Vidaurre suddenly dropped out of the race on Tuesday, after his party could not agree on alliances. Vidaurre wanted to ally his party with disgruntled Sandinistas, but hard-liners balked, and the candidate stepped down.

 His party quickly announced plans to nominate someone else and regain its seat in the closely watched race.

 ``The Nicaraguan people need to have an alternative,'' said José Antonio Alvarado, who was Vidaurre's campaign chairman. ``Yes, there will be a candidate.''

 However, those plans were shot down Wednesday morning, when the spokesman for the Supreme Electoral Council said the party's own rules say there isn't enough time. The deadline for nominating a candidate was last month, but the elections council allows substitutions until Aug. 7.

 The spokesman for the election magistrates, Silvio Americo Calderón, said first the Conservatives would have to follow the rules set in their own charter for naming
 replacements. The party's rules, he said, allow for substitutions only in case of death or incapacitation. Further, they say a candidate has to announce intentions to run
 two months in advance -- and undergo all the formalities of a national convention.

 It would be impossible for the party to satisfy those regulations in just three weeks.

 ``I am not going to give any interpretations,'' Calderón said. ``I can say that if they do not present a candidate by Aug. 7, they will be left without a candidate.''

 Before Wednesday's decision, polls were showing Ortega in first place, and the Conservatives last with about 10 to 15 percent of the vote. Many speculate that without a Conservative candidate, those votes will go to Bolaños, giving him the edge for an easy victory.

 ``I don't agree,'' Alvarado said. ``I think they would just feel a vacancy. They'd be left with nobody to vote for.''

                                    © 2001