Herty Lewites

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

1960 Herty Lewites the opposition joined against 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 action by the Sandinistas in Masaya. When trying to buy weapons in the United States for the movement, Lewites was arrested. After the fall of the Somoza regime in 1979 Lewites was appointed Minister of Tourism. In 1990, after the presidential election lost the FSLN, Daniel Ortega in the lost the presidency to Violeta Barrios de Chamorro, was Lewites to a Member of Parliament for the FSLN. At the beginning of the 1990s separated Herty Lewites from the FSLN. In 1996 he founded his own movement, the Movimiento Sol, but returning in 1998 to the FSLN.

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

In early 2005 Lewites declared his willingness to want to run as a presidential candidate of the FSLN in the 2006 elections. He called primaries within the FSLN to determine a presidential candidate within the FSLN. Thereupon, Lewites and Victor Hugo Tinoco, a longtime party official in Managua, expelled from the party. Surveys conducted by the opinion research institute CID - Gallup in October 2004 and March 2005 brought for Lewites an increase of 38 percent to 59 percent approval among the FSLN supporters, however, showed the candidate of the FSLN, the former President Daniel Ortega, a loss of 47 percent in November to 31 percent in March. Received support Lewites candidacy among other things, by Ernesto Cardenal and Gioconda Belli.

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

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