NICARAGUA: NATIONAL HERO EDEN PASTORA BEGINS HUNGER STRIKE

(23 Aug 1998) Spanish/Nat

One of Nicaragua's national heroes, Eden Pastora, began a hunger strike on Sunday demanding his Nicaraguan nationality is acknowledged so he can stand as a candidate in the upcoming presidential elections.

Pastor, better known as Comandante Cero, won the hearts of his people when he fought in the 1970s and 1980s for the country's freedom.

He became a Costa Rica citizen after he fled Nicaragua for political reasons - but despite his return the Supreme Council Electoral Council has denied to grant him back his citizenship.

Twenty years after the historic takeover of the Palacio Nacional, Eden Pastora, better known as Comandante Cero, marched down the same road.

In 1978 he kidnapped all of Somoza's ministers in the palace and demanded that all political prisoners in Nicaragua were freed.

He succeeded and became a national hero.

On Friday, surrounded by dozens of loyal supporters, Pastora walked past the Supreme Electoral Council that last year denied him his Nicaraguan nationality.

And without that, Pastora is unable to stand as a candidate in the upcoming presidential elections.

His supporters are rallying around him and his latest cause.

SOUNDBITE: (Spanish) (shouting)
"Long live Eden Pastora, Chief commander who took that National Palace gaining freedom for all political prisoners in Nicaragua."
SUPER CAPTION: Vox Pop

SOUNDBITE: (Spanish)
"We consider him a hero because he would have died in those days to get a free Nicaragua."
SUPER CAPTION: Vox Pop

Pastora was a former Southern Front Commander of the Sandinista rebel group - who fought for the country's freedom during Nicaragua's civil war.

The Sandinistas won city after city with the support of thousands of civilians fighting on the side in the late 1970's.

In July 1979, President Anastasia Somoza resigned and fled the country - the Sandinistas then marched triumphantly into the capital Managua.

That victory saw Pastora rise through the ranks and become the Sandinistas military head but in 1981 he deserted the group saying the revolution was no longer democratic but Marxist-Leninist.

He set up another rebel movement and fought for three years against the Sandinistas - surviving an assassination attempt, before fleeing to Costa Rica.

SOUNDBITE: (Spanish)
"These are the ideas we want to give our children because it is for them that we fight, so that tomorrow, when they become men, they'll have a nation and will not have to flee to other countries like we had to do."
SUPER CAPTION: Eden Pastora (as he entered Managua in 1979)

The controversial figure was also called before a United States Congressional hearing over drug trafficking allegations and connections with the C-I-A.

In 1996 Pastora announced his intentions to run for President but his ambitions were cut short by the Supreme Electoral Council's verdict that he couldn't because he no longer had Nicaraguan citizenship - and instead was a citizen of Costa Rica.

UPSOUND (Spanish)
"Mr Eden Atanacio Pastora Gomez can't be a candidate for the presidency of the republic since he has renounced at some point to his Nicaraguan nationality."
SUPER CAPTION: Rosa Marina Celaya, President of the Supreme Electoral Council, in 1996

Pastora has explained on numerous occasions that he had to take the Costa Rican nationality for political reasons, and he claims that it is for the wrong political reasons that the Supreme Electoral Council will not give him the Nicaraguan one.
SOUNDBITE (Spanish)
SUPERCAPTION: Eden Pastora, Comandante Cero
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