Managua, Nicaragua – Singer-songwriter Carlos Mejia Godoy, the newly named vice-presidential candidate for a center-left party competing in Nicaragua’s Nov. 5 elections, said he will go on composing and performing during the campaign.
Mejia Godoy, 63, agreed this week to join the ticket of the Sandinista Renewal Movement after erstwhile vice-presidential hopeful Edmundo Jarquin moved up to the top spot as a result of the sudden death of Herty Lewites, the former Managua mayor who founded the party.
The singer said he will not repeat what he sees as the mistake made by other Latin American musical artists who put their careers aside when they decided to seek public office.
“That was the error of Palito Ortega (in Argentina) and that was the error of Ruben Blades (in Panama): give up everything to get involved in politics. No way! The people know you for your own craft,” said the composer of the Sandinista anthem.
“What is it I’ve been doing over these last 40 years? Singing, it’s the only thing I’ve learned and the only thing I’m known for doing,” he added.
Mejia Godoy said he told the leaders of his party that being able to continue his musical career was a condition for agreeing to be on the ticket.
“When I accepted I told them: condition ‘sine qua non,’ as the lawyers say, give me time to continue composing and continue singing. If you take that from me, you take away my oxygen, my reason for being. It’s as if you prohibit a bird from flying and from singing,” he recounted.
Mejia Godoy, who last year dedicated a song to Lewites, hosts a television program featuring folklore and comedy and heads a foundation that organizes concerts of traditional Nicaraguan music.
Lewites, who was 66, died Sunday of a heart attack. Within days, the Sandinista Renewal Movement decided to make Jarquin, a 59-year-old economist and son-in-law of former President Violeta Chamorro, the party’s presidential candidate.
The former mayor of the capital bolted from the Sandinistas after party chief Daniel Ortega refused to allow a primary to choose the party’s presidential aspirant.
Ortega, who governed Nicaragua from 1979-90, first as leader of the junta that ousted dictator Anastasio Somoza and subsequently as the elected head of state, is making yet another bid for the presidency, having lost the last three elections.
