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For a day of two inaugurations separated by 1,600 kilometers, a late flight and an ideological time warp, it was apt for one of the new presidents to quote Albert Einstein's theory of relativity.

Venezuela's president, Hugo Chavez, was sworn in for a third consecutive term at a morning ceremony in the capital, Caracas, and several hours later, in Managua, Daniel Ortega was sworn in as president of Nicaragua.

Chavez, a social democrat-turned US-bashing revolutionary, had a plane waiting to whisk him to the Nicaraguan capital to congratulate Ortega.

Latin America's political storms have hurtled the two men in opposite directions but they remain allies and the Venezuelan did not want to miss the Sandinista's return to power.

First, however, Chavez had a date with history. In front of a packed national assembly he accepted the presidential sash, raised his right hand and declared: "Fatherland. Socialism or death! I swear it." After a pause, he added: "I swear by Christ the greatest socialist in history."

Since being re-elected in a landslide last month the former paratrooper has tightened his grip on power and promised to nationalise key sectors of the economy to shunt the world's fifth biggest oil exporter away from capitalist inequality and privilege.

The past eight years of his rule laid the groundwork for what will henceforth be accelerating radicalization on the principles of Trotsky's permanent revolution, Chavez said. "We have hardly begun. It will be permanent."

Turning to look into the camera he saluted and said "Hello, Fidel", assuming that his mentor, the ailing Cuban leader, was watching.

Citing the Bible to show Jesus was a communist, the president attacked Venezuela's Roman Catholic Church and the head of the Organization of American States for criticizing his decision not to renew the license of an opposition-aligned TV station.

Several times the assembly rose in standing ovations but not when Chavez repeated a promise to unite his sprawling ruling coalition into a single party, a move which would further clip his allies' dwindling autonomy.

A glance at his watch showed he had spoken for more than two hours, delaying the departure for Managua. "The acceleration of time," he mused, "it's relative". Albert Einstein, he added, was not only a genius but a socialist.

Whether Venezuela is moving ahead towards an innovative leftwing economic model, or moving backwards towards Cuban-style authoritarianism, is a question for ordinary Venezuelans to answer, not physicists.

In Nicaragua, too, time was spinning. In the 1980s Ortega was a president who fought US-backed Contra guerrillas in a bloody civil war which made him a White House nemesis. The first President George Bush called him "this little man" and an "unwanted animal at a garden party".

Voted out of office in 1990, he made a triumphant electoral comeback last November after casting himself as a moderate and reconciler who would deliver his nation from poverty.
The second President Bush phoned him this week to say the past should be put aside, and sent a delegation to yesterday's ceremony.

In contrast to his combative Caracas counterpart, Ortega, with a weaker grip on power, has sought to soothe his country's independent media as well as the Catholic Church. He appalled some Sandinistas, who remember when the movement championed secularism and women's rights, by backing a total ban on abortion.

Where Chavez's campaign slogan was "rojo, rojito" red, very red Ortega chose pastel pink.

The Nicaraguan president promised to walk a tightrope between promoting good relations with Washington while accepting cheap loans and other aid from Chavez, whose economy is awash with revenue thanks to booming oil exports to the United States.

The result: a self-described US foe funding an ideological turncoat with American dollars. Shame Einstein did not formulate a theory of irony.

Since his landslide election to Venezuela's presidency in 1998, Chavez has become renowned as an admirer of Fidel Castro, a dogmatic anti-globalist, and a gleeful thorn in the side of the Bush administration. He has, in short, become the hero of both fresh-faced and die-hard socialists the world over. Born the son of schoolteachers in 1954, Chavez graduated from Venezuela's military academy with a degree in engineering in 1975. He came to the world's attention in 1992 after a failed attempt to overthrow the government of President Carlos Andres Perez. In 1992, while Chavez was still in jail, his comrades launched a second attempt at deposing the government. Two years later he reinvented himself as a politician, relaunching his party as the Movement of the Fifth Republic.

Ortega's return squares a circle encompassing the revolutionary history of modern Nicaragua. Born in 1945, he fought a guerrilla war against the dictator Anastasio Somoza.

In 1979, Ortega and five other Sandinistas took power and brought a radical transformation to Nicaragua which took some inspiration from Cuba and was supported by the country's poor population.

But when Ortega suspended the constitution, the West accused the Sandinistas of suppressing political dissent. The US launched an armed opposition, the Contras, whose grinding campaign did not win victory in Nicaragua, but by 1990 had left the country in ruins and polarized.

Ortega campaigned for re-election in 1990 and 2001, but lost twice.

(China Daily via The Guardian January 12, 2007)