The Sandinistas lose or democracy loses - Nicaragua elections - column

National Review, March 5, 1990 by William F. Buckley, Jr.

While we are at it, an appreciative word should be said about how Jimmy Carter uses his spare time. It is perhaps curious that he should have decided to spend some of it in ghetto sections of Manhattan working as a carpenter-curious because it would seem to be an improvident use of the skills of a former President. But, in an indisputable way, touching. And it is touching that he should show, in his alternative career as mediator, a) such faith in the good faith of the Sandinistas; and b) such faith in the democratic process. On February 25, there will be elections in Nicaragua. There have been elections in Nicaragua from time to time ever since the Sandinistas made elections meaningless. What is supposed to be special about the elections coming up is that the opposition is promised by the Sandinistas-in the presence of President Carter and others-a fair crack at the electorate. The opposition is bunched about Mrs. Chamorro, a striking figure whose husband was killed by the Somoza gang, causing the family to back the insurgent Sandinistas. The Chamorros registered great dismay when, upon taking power, the Sandinistas proved worse even than the Somocistas; causing a breakup in the family (one son stuck with the Sandinistas; another, and Mrs. Chamorro, struck out with the opposition); causing the Sandinistas to close down the Chamorros' newspaper, which about a year ago was once again permitted to publish, but subject to such harassments as one expects from a state whose policies are about halfway between despotic and totalitarian.

Now the purpose of democracy is to let the good guys win. Some times it isn't known who are the good guys. When U.S. Democrats run against U.S. Republicans, men of good conscience and refined morality might go one way or the other. But one would not say that about an election in which, say, Stalin, or Hitler, or Castro, or Pol Pot, or Mao Tsetung was one of the contenders, right? Right; and therefore, any contest won by such as these gentlemen would be an indictment of democracy. If a contest between a good guy and a bad guy comes in at 60-40, the tendency is to acclaim democracy for the perfect political instrument it is. But it does leave one wondering how 40 per cent of the country could have been got to vote for the bad guy. And then the question arises: If 40 per cent can be won by the bad guy, isn't it technically possible that he might have increased his vote to 51 per cent? And were he to do so, suddenly we would find that he had become the "democratic choice." And, in the religion of democracy, for that reason inviolable. Now the Sandinistas signed an elaborate covenant in 1979 in which they promised every freedom listed in our own Bill of Rights. Within two years, they had violated their word on every issue. They set out not only to revolutionize their country after a Marxist model but, using the profusion of arms given to them by Cuba and the Soviet Union, to aid revolutionary activity in neighboring countries. They shut down the press, imprisoned political dissenters, passed a conscription law that scooped up every 18-year-old boy and stuck him in the army. The Sandinistas went on to violate promises made to poor President Arias of Costa Rica. (Do you remember the Arias Peace Plan? It got a Nobel Prize, and accomplished nothing.) International pressure finally caused the Sandinistas to agree to an observed election, which is what will happen on February 25. About which election there is only one thing to say: Either Mrs. Chamorro wins it, or else, unpleasant alternative, a) it was rigged; or else, unpleasantest alternative, b) democracy is once again discredited. It is interesting that the Sandinistas' campaign has turned almost exclusively on the infamy of the U.S. action in Panama. What we did in Panama was to oust the man who cheated in the Panamanian elections, and invest as president the man who won the Panamanian elections. One should perhaps not be surprised that the Sandinistas are appalled at military action taken to guard the integrity of the democratic process. The democratic process is something the Sandinistas will either ignore, subvert, or distort. Right in front of Jimmy Carter.