Chamorro: More Than Just a Name?

By JOHN MOODY MANAGUA

The President-elect was called to the telephone in her elegant home Monday night just as the guard at the front door admitted a visitor. On the line was Ronald Reagan. In the foyer was Daniel Ortega Saavedra. Both wanted to congratulate Violeta Chamorro on her stunning upset, though clearly Reagan was the happier of the two. With the charm and diplomacy bred by her patrician upbringing, Chamorro told Reagan that she would have to call him back. Then she turned and embraced the Sandinista chief.

That these two antagonists sought out Chamorro at precisely the same moment was appropriate. Seven weeks shy of inauguration, Dona Violeta already refers to her administration as a "period of reconciliation." Her mission as President, she believes, is to heal.

Also to learn. Chamorro owes her election not to any natural gift for leadership but to her married name. Though graced with regal poise and an engaging personality, she has had little experience in public life. Her grasp of Nicaragua's Sisyphean economic challenge is tenuous, and her political range is narrow: at least initially, she is leaning heavily on the dozen family members and advisers who constitute her brain trust.

She would rather have been First Lady. Born into a wealthy cattle-ranching family, Violeta Barrios enjoyed a charmed girlhood that included private schooling in Texas. She plunged abruptly into the teeming currents of Latin politics in 1950 when she wed Pedro Joaquin Chamorro, the crusading, ambitious publisher of the daily La Prensa. His opposition to Nicaragua's Somoza family dictatorship frequently landed him in jail. While raising their four children, Violeta also carried food to Pedro's cell and smuggled notes to his confederates.

Her husband's assassination on a Managua street in 1978, widely pinned on Anastasio Somoza Debayle, ignited the popular outrage that a year later brought the Sandinistas to power. Exploiting Violeta's symbolic value as the widow of a martyr, the victorious rebels persuaded her to join a coalition junta. She accepted but soon fell out with Ortega and his fellow Marxists. Chamorro left the government in 1980 and became publisher of La Prensa. The job automatically made her the most prominent and vociferous enemy of the Sandinistas in the country.

When the hybrid National Opposition Union realized last year that to challenge Ortega it needed star quality on its presidential ticket, the magic Chamorro name was again decisive. Wary of wading back into politics, the silver-haired widow at first demurred, but she accepted the nomination at the urging of her husband's spirit, with whom she says she communes regularly.

Dona Violeta's early campaign appearances were frightfully inept. Confronted with issues she had not mastered, she often berated her questioners or deferred to running mate Virgilio Godoy. By January she had learned to stick to prepared speeches and emphasize her personal appeal. Her radiant smile and motherly concern warmed Nicaraguans chilled by a decade of Ortega's martial scowls.

Empathy may be her greatest virtue as President. Nicaraguans have been killing one another in revolution and civil war for more than a decade. Who knows these divisions better than Dona Violeta? She is the widow of a man murdered for his political beliefs, and a mother reviled as a traitor by two of her children, who are committed to the revolution. Yet never have her Sandinista son and daughter been unwelcome in her home. That kind of tolerance ; is hard for an embittered nation to summon up. It should help to have an exemplar who has experienced anguish firsthand.

Chamorro is certain she can suture Nicaragua's self-inflicted wounds. Abolishing the unpopular military draft will be the first step. She must also rein in Godoy, whose statements during the campaign suggested that settling old scores might be the new government's top priority. At her first press conference, the President-elect made a point of fielding tough questions herself and praising Ortega for his concession of defeat.

Chamorro will have no honeymoon with the sizable Sandinista minority that considers her a class enemy, and she has little in common with the poor. Last January, when she broke her knee in a fall at home, she jetted to Houston for surgery. She returned home in a wheelchair that cost more than most of her countrymen earn in a year.

Some Nicaraguans expect the new government to banish poverty by decree. They will be disillusioned by the time and exertion required to refloat an economy that has run aground. And Chamorro will not perform without error. She considers her mission divine but suffers from high-handedness and an aversion to criticism, no matter how well intentioned. Irritated by endless comparisons with Philippine President Corazon Aquino, another widow of a national hero, she has developed a response both disarming and revealing: "I would rather be thought of as a Latin Margaret Thatcher."

Actually, Chamorro's presidential style will resemble that of her long- distance admirer. Like Ronald Reagan, Chamorro holds deeply ingrained if unrefined notions of what she wants to accomplish. She has demonstrated an ability to impart those aspirations to the populace, and she knows how to delegate authority to more able lieutenants.

For the record, Chamorro never returned Reagan's call, but he phoned again Tuesday, and the two spoke only briefly. Chamorro was fretting over her first postelection address, trying to make sure it sounded just right. It was a distraction the Great Communicator would surely appreciate.