'Time not only heals all wounds, it opens all eyes'

JD Gannon was a reporter in Nicaragua from 1986 to 1990. Here he remembers the leader he once admired

"DIMINUTIVE. Wouldn't you say Daniel Ortega is diminutive? I mean, he is rather small."

It was the fall of 1989, San Jose, Costa Rica. I was acting as guide/interpreter for the Daily Telegraph's Washington bureau chief. George Bush was in town for the first hemispheric meeting of heads of state, a meeting so lacking in consequence that the only real question was whether Daniel Ortega would get his picture taken with Bush, and the Telegraph guy was writing the intro to his story and looking for a good adjective for the president of the scrappiest nation in the new world.

"Diminutive?" I demanded. "Daniel would kick Bush's ass in a New York minute."

I wasn't writing about the summit so wasn't worried about paying homage to the American god of "objectivity". I probably wanted him to kick Bush's ass.

"Daniel" as he was known to all, was a real leader - had fought the good fight and won. Had suffered imprisonment, torture, battle, the loss of friends and family but had had victory ripped from him by the colossus to the north, only because America was a sore loser. And it rankled the conscience of every reporter in Nicaragua with any sense of fair play.

Daniel was Nicaragua in those days and the lack of respect shown him was the same shown to that entire, impoverished but beautiful nation.

Had the Telegraph's man that day whispered to me that Daniel was raping his step-daughter, I might have kicked his ass.

But time not only heals all wounds, it opens all eyes. And I and every well-wisher Ortega ever had had long ago shrugged our shoulders and turned our backs on a man whose unseemly descent from revolutionary leader to power-grabbing leader was complete years before his step-daughter made public her private nightmare.

In the face of popular electoral defeat, Ortega tried to grab as much power as he could gain in opposition. The needs of Nicaragua and "the people" were cast aside.

He long ago drove out the best and the brightest the Sandinista front had to offer, vilified any and all who suggested a thoroughly rejected leader might want to step aside for a new generation to take over.

And he has dragged the once proud and resourceful Front down with him, where it now languishes as a party with nothing to offer but what it can deny its enemies - enemies it was once unworthy of having.

Daniel was not the revolution, no man ever is. But we search for the individual to embody the good. This whole unseemly affair calls to mind a scene from Brecht's Galileo.

Galileo, having recanted before the Inquisition, returns to his rooms to find his favourite student, crestfallen, waiting for him. The student denounces him, crying out "pity a world without heroes!" To which the ageing astronomer sighed: "No, pity a world that needs a hero."