Caribbean & Central America - July 2006 (ISSN 1741-4458)

Death of Lewites changes electoral landscape
Just days after the US assistant secretary of state for western hemisphere affairs, Tom Shannon, described him as one of the two presidential candidates "representing the future of Nicaragua", Herty Lewites, the dissident Sandinista, died of a heart attack. Daniel Ortega, former president and candidate for the Frente Sandanista de Liberación Nacional (FSLN), had begun to pull ahead in the race for the presidency. The question now is whether Lewites' votes will migrate to the old-fashioned leftist Ortega, the modernising rightwinger Eduardo Montealegre, or the new MRS candidate, Edmundo Jarquín.