Former Contra Mercenary to Run for President in Nicaragua

Former contra during the U.S. dirty war against Nicaragua, Maximino Rodriguez, announced Monday his decision to run in the upcoming presidential elections under the banner of the Constitutionalist Liberal Party.

ANALYSIS:
Whatever Happened to Nicaragua's Right-Wing Opposition?

The contras, or counterrevolutionaries, were U.S.-funded right-wing paramilitaries that fought to topple the popular Sandinista Revolution between 1979 and the early 1990s, leading to many human rights abuses, as the contras systematically used terror tactics against the population. At least 30,000 people died in the war and many were displaced.

Rodriguez, who was a member of congress from 1996-2011, justified his candidacy saying the political elites lost credibility and needed to be replaced.

A fierce opponent of Sandinista President Daniel Ortega, Rodriguez said that “patriotism” motivated him, criticizing the “autocracy” of the current government, who he said “appropriated itself all the country's institutions." The FSLN, the former guerrilla group-turned-political party, won popular support in the two previous general elections in 2006 and 2011.

Ortega recently announced that no international observers would be invited to the elections, due in November, but only electoral experts from Latin America. The decision was a reaction to the continent-wide campaign to destabilize left-wing governments but also reflects the reality that Nicaragua's institutional strength is based on domestic national consensus independent of international approval or disapproval.

From 2007 to date the right wing in Nicaragua has consistently organized provocations to try and destabilize the country or discredit the government. In 2015 four local Sandinista leaders were killed in what are considered to be political murders. In July 2014 right-wing activists ambushed a caravan of Sandinista supporters returning from the annual celebration of the revolution, killing five people and wounding 24. The general association of these attacks with the country's hard right has helped contribute to the current irrelevance of the political opposition in Nicaragua.