Nicaragua's main presidential candidates

Nicaragua will hold general elections on Sunday to choose the country's president, vice president, 90 deputies of the National Assembly and 20 Central American parliamentarians.

The following are profiles of three of the five presidential candidates.

-- Daniel Ortega, candidate of the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN), leads opinion polls with 30-34 percent of support.

Born on Nov. 11, 1945, in a small town in central Nicaragua. Ortega began to study law in 1962 at Managua's Central American University.

He became a member of the FSLN in 1963, and a member of the executive committee of the FSLN from 1964 to 1967. He was arrested several times during the early 1960s and went to Cuba for guerrilla training in 1974.

After Anastasio Somoza, the third dictator in a row from the family, fell in July 1979, Ortega became coordinator of the ruling junta revolutionary government from 1981 to 1985. He then won presidential elections at the age of 39 in November 1984 but lost in April 1990. He was elected secretary-general of the FSLN in July 1991.

Ortega has proposed the establishment of a national reconciliation government. He has said he will seek macro-economic stability with low inflation, and generate jobs by granting small and medium-sized enterprises more credit.

He has also said Nicaragua must attract private investment in energy and telecommunications, and that the government must continue to have a stake in important private companies.

He married poetess Rosario Murillo and the couple have eight children.

-- Eduardo Montealegre, candidate of the Nicaraguan Liberal Alliance-Conservative Party (ALN-PC), is in second place in the polls, with 22-25.5 percent.

Born on May 9, 1955, into a rich family in the capital Managua. Montealegre earned an economics degree from the United States' Brown University in 1976 and then a master's degree in business administration, specializing in finance and strategic planning from Harvard.

He began his career as assistant director at Nicaragua's Central Bank in 1976, then for investment bank Shearson Lehman Hutton in New York until 1986, before moving to Miami to set up his own finance company. Returning to Nicaragua in 1991, he became a managing director of the Central American Credit Bank until October 1997.

He was secretary to the presidency from October 1997 to September 1998, minister of foreign affairs from September 1998 to October 2000, and minister of finance and public credit in 2002. Later, he became secretary to the presidency again and general coordinator of the cabinet until last year, when he decided to run for president.

He married Eliza McGregor Raskosky and the couple have four children.

-- Jose Rizo, candidate of the Liberal Constitutionalist Party (PLC), is in third place with 17-20 percent of support.

He was born on Sept. 27, 1944 in Jinotenga. When he was 20 months old, he suffered from polio and was sent for treatment to Louisiana in the United States.

After studying law in Managua's Central American University, he went on to study political science, and economics and international law at universities in France and England.

From the early 1990s, he held a series of senior posts within the party. When the PLC's Arnoldo Aleman became mayor in 1990, Rizo served as his private secretary, and in 2001 was elected as vice-president alongside Enrique Bolanos as president.

His key promises are the building of a railway to link Central America, to privatize the nation's free trade areas and use the proceeds to start a development bank.

Fabiola Salinas is his third wife, who is 22 years younger than him. He had three children.

Source: Xinhua