Nicaragua's Ortega a changed man, but still feared

MANAGUA, Nicaragua, Nov 8 (Reuters) When Daniel Ortega rolled into Managua in a jeep, rifle in hand at the head of a popular 1979 revolution, he was an angry radical with fierce discipline and a dream of freeing his country from poverty.

Nearly three decades later, Ortega is now much more a middle-class ''politico'', a pragmatist prepared to cut deals and make peace with even bitter enemies to win power.

The leftist 60-year-old won Sunday's presidential election to complete a remarkable comeback 16 years after he was thrown out by voters tired of a vicious decade-long civil war between his Marxist government and US-backed Contra rebels.

It makes him one of the few men in history to take power first through the the barrel of a gun and later in democratic elections, but Ortega has changed over the years.

Gone are the austere olive green military fatigues on a skinny frame, the unfashionable thick-rimmed glasses and the fiery rhetoric against ''Yankee imperialism''.

Instead, the balding Sandinista party leader drives a Mercedes Benz sport utility vehicle, uses contact lenses and dresses well, usually preferring white on the campaign trail.

Only the thick mustache remains.

Now the former urban guerrilla who was jailed and tortured for fighting the US-backed dictatorship he later toppled prefers to talk about God, peace, love and reconciliation.

And he has backed a free trade pact with the United States, his old Cold War enemy.

Nicaragua's poor hope he still carries the same fire for social justice that inspired ambitious literacy campaigns and rural health programs in the first years of Sandinista rule.

In a country that is second only to Haiti as the Western Hemisphere's poorest, many have very high expectations.

''This is the best thing that could happen to Nicaragua,'' aid Gleysi Garcia, a 21-year-old-law student. ''They are going to help us to make our dreams a reality.'' RETURN OF A RADICAL? But many others worry that the radicalism and authoritarian style of Ortega's rule in the 1980s will also be repeated when he takes office in January, sparking new conflict.

''He's a danger for Nicaragua,'' boomed a campaign ad from conservative rival Eduardo Montealegre over grainy images of civil war horrors -- corpses being loaded onto trucks and poor people lining up for food rations.

Ortega campaigned on a center-left platform. He says he has dropped radical policies of the past but is still a socialist and will help the poor by reining in ''savage capitalism''.

The sons of politically active middle-class parents, Ortega and two brothers were all senior commanders in the long guerrilla war against dictator Anastasio Somoza. Camilo was killed but Humberto later became Sandinista defense minister.

Daniel Ortega was first arrested at the age of 15, and was later jailed for seven years and tortured for robbing a bank to finance the revolution.

The US government fears Ortega remains a radical at heart who will join forces with other anti-US leaders in Latin America, led by Venezuela's fiery President Hugo Chavez.

No one knows for sure what to expect as Ortega is a wily political operator and promises all things to all men.

Catholic church leaders and senior former Contra leaders have been won over, including his vice-presidential running mate Jaime Morales, whose mansion Ortega seized after the 1979 revolution and still lives in.

Ortega also survived a scandal that would have wrecked most political careers when a stepdaughter alleged in 1998 that he had sexually abused her for years.

His wife Rosario Murillo, who he married in a clandestine ceremony during the guerrilla campaign against Somoza, stood by him and he weathered the storm, never losing control of his party.

REUTERS DH BST0713