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One thing was demonstrated on November 4 in Nicaragua. There's no tailor in the world that can produce a sheep's suit for the wolf that can fool the people who know the wolf well.
During the electoral campaign for the presidency, Daniel Ortega, the Sandinista chief, tried to convince Nicaraguans that he was not the former communist dictator they rejected twice when they had a chance to vote freely in 1990, and then again six years later.
Nicaraguans went to the polls on that Sunday and make their verdict known: Mr. wolf, your sheep's clothing does not convince me that you are not the wolf any longer. And they made Enrique Bolaņos the winner, one of the first victims of the wolf.
Enrique Bolaņos was a successful businessman when the Sandinistas exchanged the Anastasio Somoza dictatorship by the own in 1979. Not much time had gone by when Ortega's communist regime took over Bolaņos business. Bolaņos's complaints only served to land him in jail-without trial or conviction.
Bolaņos refused to follow the road to exile, as other Nicaraguans did. "This is my country. Nobody will ever force me to leave it."
When the Sandinistas found themselves cornered in the civil war and had no option but to call for elections, Bolaņos wanted to be the candidate of the coalition that opposed the Sandinistas, but a more conciliatory figure was chosen: Violeta Chamorro, who defeated Ortega in the 1990 election.
Ortega conceded this time his defeat shortly after the polls closed, but not at the hands of the Nicaraguan people but due to the "dirty campaign" carried out by the United States to stop him from returning to power. It is typical of dictators to blame their defeats on external factors, an insulting way of saying that voters are dumb and easily manipulated because they cannot think on their own.
There can be no doubt that the United States gave its unfavorable opinion on Ortega, but the Socialist International of Latin America and the Caribbean, part of the SI that gathers eleven of the fifteen countries of the European Union, reaffirmed its total support to the Sandinista National Liberation Front and its candidate, Ortega, at a meeting it held in Managua two week before the election.
The truth is that Nicaraguans well remember that the expropriations carried out by the Sandinistas destroyed the country's economic fabric, and that their failed socialist policies and the harassment of opponents put an end to any possibility of recovering from the damage done by the civil war.
But not everything will go well for winner Enrique Bolaņos. Seventy-three years old, he has the reputation of being honest, but he will have to erase the stain of having been vice president in outgoing president Arnoldo Aleman's government.
Bolaņos has pledged to crack down on corruption, and has even suggested he is prepared to go against Aleman, who enjoys immunity from prosecution because of a law he oversaw granting outgoing presidents an automatic seat in congress.
Bolaņos has said that "immunity doesn't mean impunity." It will not be easy for him to implement this, but his combativeness is well known-and it would be good if he were also put it to use to revert the injustices committed during the 11-year dictatorship of the Sandinistas.
As many other chieftains of the old regime. Daniel Ortega continues to live in the million-dollar mansion he stole from its legitimate owner, Jaime Morales, 22 years ago. Its is somewhat late, but if Ortega wants to prove he has indeed turned into a sheep what he has to do is return it. And if he doesn't return it, it should be taken away from him. Let him and Rosa Murillo, his concubine-it's not our own definition of their relationship; years ago in New York she personally explained to us how proud she was of this non-bourgeois relationship-go out and seek out a home like any other Nicaraguan couple. This, and finding out how Daniel and Rosario have paid their bills all this time would be a symbolic closing to this painful era in the history of Nicaragua.
Claudio Campuzano (claudio-campuzano@hotmail.com) is U.S, correspondent for the Latin American newsweekly Tiempos del Mundo and editorial page editor of the New York daily Noticias del Mundo. He writes weekly for World Tribune.com