By Mary Jordan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday; Page A18

MANAGUA, Nicaragua--Daniel Ortega, the Sandinista leader whose revolution consumed Ronald Reagan's Washington in the 1980s, says he is a changed man.
His military fatigues are gone, in favor of pink and yellow dress shirts. The rebel who spent seven years in jail for robbing a Bank of America branch to fund Marxist
guerrillas is now a card member of American Express, urging everyone to let bygones be bygones in the post-Cold War era.

To the horror of the Bush administration, Ortega's new persona is playing in Managua: The revolutionary icon has a good chance of regaining the presidency in an
election scheduled for Nov. 4.

Eleven years after being voted out of office, Ortega, 55, is locked in a race that is too close to call. He is running a populist campaign, capitalizing on anger about a
decade of economic deprivation and the reputation for gluttonous corruption that has settled on the current president, Arnoldo Aleman. In a country particularly
devastated this year by drought and sinking prices for coffee exports, many poor Nicaraguans hungry for change -- even a change back to the future -- are lining up
with Ortega in hopes that this time things will be better.

In a visit to the Managua neighborhood known as The Promised Land, Ortega showed that he still has a laser-like ability to connect with the poor. Hundreds of
people chanting "Dan-YELL, Dan-YELL" jostled for the chance to touch, kiss, hug or applaud him. Many said they think he is the best route out of their misery.

"During the revolution, he helped us get this land where we are standing right now," said Maritza Garcia, 48, who seemed not to care from whom, or how, Ortega
might have gotten that land. "So many are jobless now; maybe he can do better by us."

Ortega, fit and trim and soaked with sweat in 95-degree heat, walked for hours through the slums, shaking every hand, kissing every child. It seemed clear that for
him, the revolution is still going strong.

"I deserve a chance to be president in peacetime," Ortega said in an interview, adding that his Marxist ideology is now tempered by Christianity. "I could do a lot for
the poor."

When Ortega and his Sandinista National Liberation Front were swept out of office in 1990 -- and repudiated again in another election in 1996 -- there was great
hope that capitalism and the free market would improve lives in this impoverished Central American nation. But instead, many people are worse off than ever;
joblessness in some parts of the country is 70 percent.

Ortega repeatedly has told voters he is not the same man who led the leftist government from 1979, when Sandinista guerrillas overthrew the U.S.-backed
dictatorship of Anastasio Somoza, until his defeat by a disenchanted electorate. "I have changed," Ortega said in the interview. "It's a different world. We are not
living in the past. I wouldn't do the same things now."

But U.S. officials are open about their hope that Ortega does not win. In discussions with business leaders here, U.S. diplomats have said American aid and
investment could dry up in a Nicaragua led by Ortega. That is a serious threat in a country of 4.9 million people where vast numbers have no formal schooling or
running water, and inadequate food.

Many Nicaraguans, including Ortega, contend U.S. diplomats have intervened to block Ortega and boost his main rival, former vice president Enrique Bolanos of
the governing Liberal Party. They cite this sequence: U.S. officials spoke a number of times over several weeks with a third candidate, Noel Vidaurre of the
Conservative Party, who, with up to 14 percent in polls, was draining support from Bolanos. In mid-July, Vidaurre dropped out. And by last month, Bolanos edged
ahead in a poll for the first time.

Lino Gutierrez, number two official in the State Department's Western Hemisphere division, came here in June and made his distaste for Ortega clear, saying, "If
those who now call themselves democrats had meant it, by now they would have returned properties confiscated illegally to their rightful owners."

The U.S. Embassy here is trying to help owners recover more than 800 pieces of land and other property that the Sandinistas confiscated in the early days of the
revolution. Much of the land was owned by Nicaraguans who fled to the United States and are now U.S. citizens.

In their early days, the Sandinistas invoked the progressive Latin American left, promising to replace dictatorship with free health care, transportation and improved
education. But the government that took over in 1979 immediately got bogged down fighting a U.S.-financed revolt by counterrevolutionaries known as contras. The
fighting killed an estimated 20,000 people and helped destroy an already crippled economy.

Along the way, the ideals of 1979 gave way to corruption, economic bungling and greed. Many believers in the revolution have now split with Ortega -- the original
Sandinista leadership remains deeply divided -- saying he is interested only in power.

Many U.S. officials say that is what they still see when they look at Ortega. They say he has had two decades to right injustices, first as president and then as a
member of the National Assembly. The fact that he still counts among his friends the Libyan leader, Moammar Gaddafi, and President Fidel Castro of Cuba adds to
Washington's mistrust.

Nicaragua has an overwhelmingly young population, and the legal voting age is 16. Those who were in diapers during Ortega's heyday may decide the outcome. But
the Bush team remembers those days well.

Elliott Abrams, a top adviser in the 1980s and prominent figure in the Iran-contra investigation, is on the National Security Council staff. Otto Reich, who helped
Reagan drum up support for the contras, has been nominated to head State Department operations in the Western Hemisphere. And John D. Negroponte, who was
U.S. ambassador to Honduras when the contras were based there, is Bush's nominee for U.N. ambassador.

Painful memories of Ortega's first presidency also are driving his chief rival. Bolanos, 73, was a thriving businessman when the Sandinistas took over. The
government under Ortega confiscated millions of dollars worth of his cotton and sugar lands, most of which he has not recovered.

"I lost everything," said Bolanos, who has since made himself a rich man.

In a 7 a.m. interview in his impeccably ordered home, with large green parrots squawking on his patio, Bolanos said his bid against Ortega is not a vendetta, but a
quest against a communist whose economic policies plundered the country.

"It's a gimmick that he's changed," Bolanos said. "His image has been very well managed in recent years, but he's the same guy."

But Bolanos's campaign is haunted by his tenure as Aleman's vice president. Since becoming president, Aleman has been dogged by media reports that he has
acquired exclusive beachfronts and other valuable properties and showered his staff with salaries of as much as $150,000 a year in a capital where the typical salary
is less than $2,000 a year. Nicaraguans widely accuse him of corruption.

Bolanos does not directly address questions about Aleman's corruption. But he said that he himself has been an honest public servant. He said any investigation into
wrongdoing by Nicaraguan leaders should start in 1979 -- with Ortega.

Bolanos was alluding to perhaps the most explosive subplot in the campaign -- rape and abuse charges leveled at Ortega in 1998 by his stepdaughter. The
stepdaughter, Zoilamerica Narvaez, claimed that Ortega sexually abused her repeatedly for a dozen years beginning when she was 11. She said the abuse occurred
during the 1980s and she did not reveal it out of loyalty to the Sandinista cause.

Ortega has never had to formally answer the allegations because, as a National Assembly member, he is immune from prosecution. But Ortega's campaign has
largely deflected the issue among voters by painting Narvaez as a confused woman. Ortega, in an interview, said the allegations are "totally false."

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