By Mary Jordan
Washington Post Foreign Service

MEXICO CITY -- The latest political tactic in Nicaragua: guilt by Osamafication.

In the weeks leading up to next Sunday's presidential election, political ads on Nicaraguan television have been showing Osama bin Laden carrying his AK-47 assault
rifle with a narrator intoning: "If he could vote in Nicaragua, he would vote for Comandante Daniel Ortega."

Subtlety has not been a hallmark of this campaign. Polls show Ortega, the Sandinista leader whose 1980s armed revolution was a nagging burr in President Ronald
Reagan's saddle, in a virtual dead heat in his attempt to regain his old office.

His opponents, noting his long friendships with Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi and Cuba's Fidel Castro -- who are also featured in the TV spots -- are trying to tar
Ortega with links to terrorism and now to bin Laden, a man he says he has never met.

"It's garbage. It's ridiculous. It's dirty tricks," Ortega spokesman Saul Arana said of the political ads lumping Ortega with bin Laden, the main suspect in the Sept. 11
terrorist attacks. "Bin Laden was trained by the CIA. What did he have to do with the Sandinistas? It's a sign of deep desperation."

Carlos Fernando Chamorro, one of Nicaragua's leading journalists, said it was "impossible to predict how the fear campaign" that has saturated the airwaves in
recent weeks would affect the close race.

Ortega's main challenger is Enrique Bolanos, 73, a businessman and former vice president to outgoing President Arnoldo Aleman. Ortega's campaign has been trying
to link Bolanos to allegations of corruption in the Aleman presidency. Under Nicaraguan law, Aleman is barred from serving consecutive terms.

The United States has once again become active in politics in Nicaragua, a poor Central American country that served as a Cold War battleground during the
Reagan and George H.W. Bush presidencies. Officials in the current Bush administration support Bolanos and criticize Ortega in speeches and private lobbying
efforts from Washington to Managua.

On Oct. 4, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell met with Nicaragua's foreign minister in Washington. Afterward, in remarks widely reported in Nicaragua, a State
Department spokesman said the United States had "serious reservations" about Ortega and his Sandinista party for their "past of trampling on civil liberties,
destroying the economy and maintaining links with those who support terrorism."

The next day, John Keane, acting deputy secretary for Western Hemisphere affairs, gave a speech in Pittsburgh that resonated in Managua: "I would be dishonest if I
did not acknowledge that the possibility of a Sandinista victory is disconcerting to the U.S. government. . . . We cannot forget that [during the 1979-90 Sandinista
era] Nicaragua became a haven for violent political extremists from the Middle East, Europe and Latin America."

Shelley A. McConnell, a Latin America specialist at the Carter Center in Atlanta, said that as negative campaigning has stepped up, important issues -- particularly an
economic rescue plan for Nicaragua -- have been ignored.

In a recent interview, Ortega said he had put his revolutionary days behind him. He said he was no longer interested in machine guns and confiscating private property
-- hallmarks of his first presidency. And, he said, while Marxist theory still influences his thinking, he is increasingly turning to a personal and political philosophy
influenced by Christianity.

He insisted that he would work cooperatively with Washington if elected. Washington remains skeptical, especially now that U.S. officials tend to measure countries
and leaders against their present or past connections with terrorism.

Analysts here say that Ortega's strong showing, after two failed campaigns in 1990 and 1996, is not, as he portrays it, the populist political rebirth of a changed man.
Rather, they say, Ortega is rising in the polls because many voters, especially the poor, view him as the lesser of two evils.

While Aleman has built roads and schools and boosted the overall economy, vast numbers of Nicaragua's poor are even poorer today, and they resent him. In a land
where many people earn less than $1 a day, Aleman gave some of his top cabinet ministers monthly salaries of $12,000. Not long after thousands were killed and
injured in Hurricane Mitch in 1998, Aleman threw himself a lavish engagement party in Miami. As drought and a global crash of coffee prices left thousands of
Nicaraguans hungry and jobless, Aleman built himself a new helicopter landing pad and questioned if there really was a crisis in the countryside.

Ortega's stewardship of Nicaragua was also rife with corruption, mismanagement and dire economic days. But the practices of Aleman, known as the "Fat Man" for
his considerable girth and extravagance, have caused many here to forget Ortega's mismanagement and remember only the more recent pain.

Bolanos has been badly hurt by his association with Aleman's government and the Liberal Party to which they both belong. Until 10 days ago, Bolanos was widely
seen as doing little to distance himself from his former boss. But then he gave a strong anti-corruption speech, seeking to quiet this criticism, saying "no one will be
above the law," and specifically identified Aleman, along with Ortega.

But a political agreement known here as "the pact" makes that hard for some to swallow. Working together, Ortega and Aleman brokered an agreement that, among
other things, gives Aleman a seat in the National Assembly after the election. Not only will this give Aleman a political perch, but since assembly members are immune
from prosecution, it protects him from potential criminal charges for the misuse of public funds.

The pact also stacked the judiciary, the national auditor's office and the national electoral council that will oversee the upcoming election with political appointees from
the parties of Ortega and Aleman.

Ortega, as a member of the assembly, has also been shielded from any criminal charges connected to his stepdaughter's allegations that he sexually abused her. The
Inter-American Human Rights Commission recently said it would examine whether the stepdaughter had been denied a fair hearing for her complaints.

"It makes my blood boil," said Gioconda Belli, a well-known Nicaraguan poet who was once in the Sandinistas' inner circle but split with Ortega.

She said the complicated political agreement has made it more difficult for new faces to emerge on the political scene. She said it was a disgrace that Bolanos and
Ortega were the only options presented to Nicaragua's 5 million people.

                                               © 2001