Polls show Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega in a position to win Nicaragua's presidency and return to the office he once took by force... It's not that ''El Comandante'' is particularly popular, but that the opposition is fractured, said Victor Borge of the Costa Rica-based polling firm Borge y Asociados. ''Daniel is no stronger than he has been in the past, and the anti-Sandinista vote remains firm,'' Borge said. ``The new phenomenon here is that we no longer have a two-party race. That's unprecedented.''In the past, Ortega's foes have lined up behind the Liberal Constitutionalist Party, or PLC. But Montealegre and the emergence of the center-left Sandinista Renovation Movement, known as MRS, have splintered the antiOrtega vote. To complicate the scenario even further, MRS presidential candidate Herty Lewites died of a heart attack July 2. The folksy former mayor of Managua was a Sandinista dissident and vocal critic of Ortega, but he also was seen as the primary suitor for some of Ortega's core left-leaning supporters. Now, it's unclear where those orphaned voters will end up.
None of the major polling firms has released results since Lewites' death. One pollster privately predicted that about two-thirds of MRS supporters would eventually drift back to the Ortega camp. But others expect that many will stick with Lewites' less charismatic but highly respected vice-presidential candidate, Edmundo JarquÃn, now the MRS' presidential hopeful, or even jump to Montealegre's camp. ''For [MRS voters] to head back to the Sandinista Front would be a betrayal of everything Herty stood for,'' said Manuel Orozco, Central America director for the Washington-based Inter-American Dialogue. ``If anything, they are closer to Montealegre's position than Ortega's.''