[Iowa-dx] Fwd: The Once and Future Daniel Ortega - A Green Analysis of the Election in Nicaragua

[hhart@blue.weeg.uiowa.edu]

Interesting article on another recent election.



http://www.greeninstitute.net/subpages/nica.asp


The Once and Future Daniel Ortega ? A Green
Analysis of the Recent Election in Nicaragua

By Steve Herrick for the Green Institute


By now, most people have heard that Daniel Ortega
was elected President of Nicaragua on November
5th. How did this happen, and what does it mean?

Ortega led the ruling Board ("junta") of
Reconstruction from 1979 to 1985, and then was
elected President by a landslide, only to be
voted out in 1990. He ran again in 1996 and
[]
2001, and lost both times, as the Right joined
ranks to defeat him (largely under pressure from the US).

This time, the Right was unable to reconcile its
differences, and ran two candidates: Jose Rizo
and Eduardo Montealegre. The sticking points
between them, in broad terms, were that Rizo
symbolized national capital, and Montealegre,
international capital. Rizo's supporters were
afraid of being crushed if Nicaragua were fully
open to foreign investment. Montealegre's
supporters wanted a nation that was friendly to
global business, not tied down by parochial and highly corrupt local elites.

Herty Lewites

There was also a split on the Left. Ortega faced
serious competition from former mayor of Managua
Herty Lewites. During his term in office
('91-'96), Lewites had approval ratings in the
60-70% range, when most other politicians were
below 30%. This, combined with his charm and
self-effacing wit, gave him a running start on his Presidential campaign.

When Ortega learned of Lewites' ambitions, he
canceled the party primaries and arranged to have
Lewites kicked out of the FSLN. This move largely
backfired on Ortega, and resulted in more Sandinistas leaving the party.

They followed Lewites into the Movement for
Sandinista Renewal (MRS), which split from the
FSLN in 1994. It was founded and led by
Sandinista artists and intellectuals (Sergio
Ramirez, Dora Maria Tellez, Gionconda Belli,
Carlos and Luis Enrique Mejia Godoy, Ernesto
Cardenal, and more), but never found much
traction among the grassroots until Lewites became its standard-bearer.

Just as the MRS was hitting its stride, and not
long after the Green Party of Nicaragua
officially allied with it, Lewites abruptly died
of a heart attack. He was quickly replaced by his
Vice-Presidential candidate, Edmundo Jarquin, but
the poll numbers never recovered. Even the new VP
candidate, immensely popular singer-songwriter
Carlos Mejia Godoy, could not rescue the ticket.

As the election went on, the US Embassy
interfered with the process even more shamelessly
than usual. At one point, the Ambassador
threatened that if Ortega won, the US would cut
off remittances from the US. Remittances bring in
upwards of a million dollars (16 cents per
person) a day to Nicaragua, which is
substantially more the total foreign aid it receives.

This meddling polarized the Left, but not the
Right, which meant that the Embassy's efforts
actually helped elect Ortega. It's very possible
that if the US had kept a respectful silence, the
results would have been more to its liking.


Daniel Ortega: a retrospective

During the 1980s, Ortega became a mythical figure
on the Left throughout the Americas, almost on
par with Fidel Castro and Ernesto "Che" Guevara.
Not only did his government successfully fend off
a proxy army of the US, it simultaneously ran a
literacy campaign and an immunization campaign,
and still found time to promote painting, music, and poetry.

To squander that level of good will would require
making a long string of poor decisions, but
Ortega has done just that. Here is a representative sampling.

In 1990, a war-weary nation voted the Sandinistas
out of power, and the top government officials
responded with a package of laws that awarded
them large expanses of state land, vehicles,
cattle, state businesses, and other assets.
Ortega was at the center of this scandal, which
became known as the "pi=F1ata," because they broke
open the state and grabbed up the "candy." This
gave Nicaragua two parallel and competing
business classes: the Sandinistas and the
anti-Sandinistas. (The Sandinistas who saw this
as a betrayal of their movement's ideals became
dissidents, left the FSLN, and formed the MRS.)

In 1998, Ortega's stepdaughter publicly accused
him of sexually molesting her for years. Ortega
denies it to this day -- as does her own mother
-- but many people, including Sandinistas, believe her.

Next, he cooked up a "pact" with the
spectacularly-corrupt President at the time,
Arnoldo Aleman, that gave huge advantages to
their respective parties, and themselves
personally. For example, all significant
government posts would be split exclusively
between their followers, and given out according
to loyalty, not qualifications or ethics. Also,
former Presidents would automatically be awarded
lifetime seats in the national legislature, where
they would enjoy blanket immunity from all
criminal charges. (In a well-calculated move,
Ortega then saw to it that the legislature voted
to strip Aleman of that immunity. But once Aleman
was convicted, Ortega arranged for what amounts to a suspended sentence.)

Ortega has gradually become cozy with his old
archenemy, the Catholic Church. During the
campaign, he said his two role models were
"Sandino and Christ." He was married to his
long-time partner, Rosario Murrillo, by the very
archbishop who warned parishoners not to vote for
him in '90, '96, and '01. To cap things off,
during the campaign this year, Ortega spearheaded
the effort to outlaw the only legal form of
abortion in Nicaragua: cases where it is
necessary to save the life of the mother.

Even more bizarrely, Ortega sought -- and got --
support from former contras in this campaign. In
fact, his Vice-Presidential candidate is Jaime
Morales Carazo, who was once a contra leader.
During the Revolution, Carazo had large amounts
of land nationalized, including his house. In the
Pi=F1ata, Ortega received the house, and still lives there today.

Back to the future?

In Nicaragua, the 1980s are the glory days --
things were simple, and young people bravely
offered their lives to fight their enemies.
Today, political issues are still framed in
reference to those days, and more so when the US
government sticks its nose into things. As a
result, there are Nicaraguans who sincerely
believe that Ortega's inauguration will
automatically trigger a new war with the United States.

The global context has changed so much since the
'80s, however, that comparisons to those days are
not useful. The recent past is much more
indicative of what to expect from an Ortega
administration. Specific predictions are
impossible to make, but here are several factors
that will shape the next five years.

First, let's dispense with Oliver North's recent
statement that Ortega is "a leopard that does not
change its spots." The Ortega of 2006 is almost
unrecognizable as the college dropout who led the
revolutionary government in 1979. He is now
pro-business, pro-clerical, and almost entirely
free of any ideological grounding, rhetorical
flourishes notwithstanding. His only goal is power.

Second, the FSLN will have only 40% of the
legislature, meaning they will have to cut deals
to accomplish anything. Their relationships with
the other four groupings in the National Assembly
range from opportunistic alliances to open hostility.

Third, Nicaragua is already locked into so-called
"free-trade" treaties like CAFTA and debt
repayment programs with the World Bank. Nicaragua
is the second-poorest nation in the Western
Hemisphere, and has the highest per-capita
foreign debt in the world. There is little Ortega can do about any of these.

In short, there will be triumphalist celebrating
on the ostensible Left and overblown
fearmongering on the Right. In the resulting
dust-up, almost everyone will overlook the fact
that most of the war of words is theatrics, and
that Ortega's return to power means very little in the lives of the poor.


Steve Herrick lives in Madison, WI, where he
works as a translator and writes on fair trade
and Green politics. He learned most of his
Spanish and a bit of his politics during the five years he lived in Nicaragu=
a.