Daniel Ortega a Favorite in Nicaragua's Coming Race for Presidency http://www.tiwy.com/news.phtml?id=198

Nicaragua's liberal elite is predictably concerned that Ortega will manage to retain presidency in the coming elections. At least until recently, a prominent role in the ranks of Ortega's opponents was played by US ambassador R. Callahan whose career trajectory seems to indicate that he belongs to the world of intelligence services much more than to that of diplomacy. In the epoch of the conflict between Nicaragua's Sandinistas and Contras, Callahan served in Honduras in the team of John Negroponte, then US ambassador and a key coordinator of the immoral anti-FSLN campaign.

Callahan continued working as Negroponte's PR henchman when the US was fighting a war against Iraq, and later surfaced as a high-ranking figure at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence in Washington.Callahan made huge efforts to prevent Sandinistas from legitimizing Ortega's (and, in a hypothetic future, somebody else's) re-election bid. To this end, the US embassy orchestrated a campaign in partnership with the parliamentary opposition, pro-US media,

schismatic groups in the Nicaraguan administration, NGOs, and dissenting student groups. When the Nicaraguan supreme court issued the verdict that the constitution article banning the incumbent president's entry into competition for a new term was inapplicable, Callahan slammed the court in an emotional outpouring he obviously failed to withhold. The court ruling in favor of Sandinistas dealt a blow to the anti-Ortega plans devised by the US Department of State and the CIA.