Ortega favoured for re-election
NICARAGUA: Nicarag ua’s President Daniel Ortega is favoured to
win November Presidential race, a poll showed Wednesday, in a
controversial re-election bid opposition leaders say is overstepping his
democratic powers. Ortega, a former guerrilla fighter and ally of
Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez, would have 36 percent support if the
elections were today, the poll by CID-Gallup published in El Nuevo
Diario daily said.
The next closest candidates were former right-wing President Arnoldo
Aleman, who won 23 percent support in the poll, and conservative
politician Fabio Gadea with 17 percent. The fractured Opposition would
have a chance at beating Ortega and his left-wing Sandinista party by
forming an alliance, Aleman said after seeing the survey’s results.
Opposition lawmakers accuse Ortega of turning the Central American
country into a Cuban-style dictatorship but have tried and failed to
overturn a 2009 ruling in the Supreme Court that lifted a ban on
re-election.
The court, controlled by the Sandinistas, overturned a constitutional
clause blocking consecutive terms.
The Sandinista party has to officially select Ortega as their
candidate February 12. The poll surveyed 1,201 people in the first 15
days of January with a margin of 2.83 percentage points. Ortega — a
former US foe who fought US-backed Government forces during a Cold
War-era civil war — led the country after the Sandinistas won a 1979
revolution and a 1984 Presidential election. He was voted out of power
in 1990 but won again in 2006.
Managua, Thursday, Reuters |