Alum vying for Nicaraguan presidency

On Nov. 5, voters in Nicaragua may pick a Brown alum to be their next president.

Eduardo Montealegre '76 is the conservative presidential candidate of the Nicaraguan Liberal Alliance party. Montealegre's most prominent opponent is Daniel Ortega, who was president of Nicaragua in the 1980s during the regime of the leftist Sandinistas.

Though he has been criticized for his close ties to the United States, there is significant support for Montealegre within Nicaragua, and he and Ortega have often been separated by a single percentage point in the polls, said Karen Kampwirth, an associate professor of political science at Knox College in Galesburg, Ill., who specializes in Nicaragua.

Montealegre graduated from Brown with a degree in economics and went on to Harvard Business School, where he received an M.B.A. with a focus in finance and strategic planning in 1978, according to his official campaign Web site.

Montealegre served as an assistant director at the Central Bank of Nicaragua in the late 1970s, but he left the country after the Sandinistas overthrew the longstanding military dictatorship of the Somoza family. After leaving, he lived in Miami, Fla., and worked for the Banking Investment Group of Shearson Lehman Hutton, according to the Web site. He became vice president of the group before starting his own financial consulting business, Montealegre & Co.

Montealegre returned to Nicaragua in 1991 and has held several positions in the government, including chief of staff under current president Enrique Bolaños.

Montealegre is to the right of his opponent and warns against the return of Ortega. In a June speech Montealegre gave at the Heritage Foundation, a right-leaning think tank in Washington, D.C., he said "today in Latin America we're faced with an expanding authoritarian leftist ideology," according to a video of the speech on the think tank's Web site. Montealegre criticized Ortega's ties with Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez. He emphasized the importance of the election, claiming a victory for Ortega would devastate Nicaragua and lead the country "to join the (Fidel) Castro-Chavez alliance."

In the speech, Montealegre promised to try to counteract the "damage caused by the combination of the Sandinistas in the (1980s) and the corruption of (former president Arnoldo) Aleman." Acknowledging the widespread poverty in Nicaragua, Montealegre said he "will emphasize universal primary education and widespread basic health care" as well as "nurture the climate for investment." Montealegre called himself a defender of free markets and a "friend of the United States."

As Montealegre speaks out against ties to Venezuela, he has received criticism about his own relationship with the United States. Kampwirth, who is a member of the Washington-based Nicaragua Network, recently worked on a delegation investigating the United States' role in the upcoming elections.

Kampwirth told The Herald Montealegre's "policies are very much in line with the kind of policies being promoted by the Bush administration." He is "clearly the candidate of the ambassador and therefore of the Bush administration," she said.

According to a report from the delegation, the United States is providing $12 million to support fair elections in Nicaragua, but "many Nicaraguans we met with are suspicious that money is being used covertly to support Montealegre."

Sergio Narvaez, a member of the nonpartisan NGO "Hagamos Democracia," told the Nicaragua Network's delegation that a "Montealegre victory would … result in a good future for economic development and continued struggle against corruption."

In his Heritage Foundation speech, Montealegre said "Nicaraguans will make a fundamental decision" through these elections and that "the future of Nicaragua and Central America is in play."

Several calls to the offices of the Nicaraguan Liberal Alliance were not returned.