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AmericasJuly 1 2007

Vote of confidence

Nicaragua’s apparently reformed ex-Marxist president is enjoying some success courting private business and international lenders in his quest to combat poverty. Local banks are also doing well. Jane Monahan reports from Managua.
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Daniel Ortega, the leader of Nicaragua’s Sandinista party (Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional) won 38% of the vote in November 2006’s elections and reassumed the presidency this January in a remarkable political comeback, after three consecutive electoral defeats.

When he was in power for the first time, from 1979 to 1990, Mr Ortega, now 61, presided over a revolutionary Marxist government, fought a protracted war against US-backed Contra rebels (that left the economy in chaos) and was Washington’s most despised leader in the region.

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