Herty Lewites

Herty Lewites Rodríguez (born December 24, 1939 in Jinotepe , Carazo , † July 2, 2006 in Managua ) was a Nicaraguan politician. He was a member of the FSLN until 2005 .

Life

Lewite's father was a Jewish immigrant from Poland . In 1960, Herty Lewites joined the opposition to the ruling Somoza regime. In 1970 he became a member of the Sandinista liberation movement. His younger brother Israel Lewites died in 1977 in a military operation by the Sandinistas in Masaya. Lewites was arrested while trying to buy weapons for the movement in the United States . After the fall of the Somoza regime in 1979, Lewites was appointed Minister of Tourism. In 1990, after the lost presidential election of the FSLN, in which Daniel Ortega lost the presidency to Violeta Barrios de Chamorro , Lewites became a member of parliament for the FSLN. At the beginning of the 1990s, Herty Lewites separated from the FSLN. In 1996 he founded his own movement, Movimiento Sol, but returned to the FSLN in 1998.

Lewites won the mayor's office of Managua as a candidate for the FSLN in November 2000 and kept this until the election of José Dionisio Marenco Gutiérrez (also FSLN) as his successor.

In early 2005, Lewites announced his willingness to run as a presidential candidate for the FSLN in the 2006 elections. He called for primary elections within the FSLN to determine a presidential candidate within the FSLN. Lewites and Victor Hugo Tinoco , long-time party functionaries in Managua, were expelled from the party. Polls by the polling institute CID-Gallup in October 2004 and March 2005 showed Lewites an increase from 38 percent to 59 percent approval among FSLN supporters, whereas the FSLN candidate, former President Daniel Ortega , recorded a 47 percent loss in November to 31 percent in March. Lewites' candidacy received support from Ernesto Cardenal and Gioconda Belli, among others .

After being expelled from the FSLN, Lewites founded his Movimiento por el Rescate del Sandinismo movement , which later became part of the Movimiento de Renovación Sandinista founded by Sergio Ramírez in 1995 . On May 21, 2006 he was officially nominated as the MRS presidential candidate. Lewites had been suffering from heart problems for some time, so in 2005 he was implanted with a pacemaker. He died of heart disease in the Hospital Metropolitano "Vivian Pellas" in Managua .

The amusement park "Hertylandia" north of Jinotepe was founded by him and named after him.

Web links

• Brief report on the political implications of the death of presidential candidate Herty Lewites

predecessor	Office	successor
Ismael Mayorga	Mayor of Managua 2001-2004	José Dionisio Marenco Gutiérrez