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.