Sandinista Fervor Turns Sour For Former Comrades Of Nicaragua’s President

Supporters of the National Sandinista Liberation Front (FSLN) celebrate November 20, 2008 near the headquarters of the Electoral Supreme Council (CSE) in Managua. Nicaragua's ruling Sandinistas were set to rally in the streets Friday after the Supreme Electoral Council said they held sway in more than two-thirds of local elections -- results the opposition says are marred by fraud. (AFP/File/Miguel Alvarez)

From New York Times:

MANAGUA, Nicaragua — The music of President Daniel Ortega’s Sandinista party, the rousing songs sung during political rallies and street protests that draw his supporters by the thousands, is the same as what rang out during the war years of the 1980s. “Brother, give me your hand, we now march united toward the victorious sun, on the path to liberty,” goes one.

But Carlos Mejía Godoy, the revolutionary singer-songwriter who dreamed up those songs when he was the Sandinistas’ chief balladeer, has told Mr. Ortega’s government to stop using his music and in recent days has been furiously scribbling new lyrics that lament the direction that Mr. Ortega is taking the country.

Like many prominent Sandinistas who have left Mr. Ortega’s movement in disgust, Mr. Mejía Godoy is now denounced by party members as a sellout who has lost his revolutionary fervor. But ex-Sandinistas, it turns out, are some of Mr. Ortega’s harshest critics these days, hounding him and provoking his ire.

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Update: Election Fraud in Nicaragua -- Wall Street Journal