Nicanet - The Nicaragua Network

Nicaragua Network Hotlines for January 12, 2006

News topics covered in this Hotline include:

Topic 1: National Assembly Fails to Elect Leadership Board for the First Time in History

For the first time ever in Nicaraguan history the National Assembly deputies failed to elect their leadership on time. Traditionally the leadership elections take place on January 9 each year and on January 10 the President of the Republic presents his yearly report to the newly elected leadership. This year the elections have had to be suspended until January 11 after the legislative session of January 9 turned into a full blown verbal battle between Sandinista (FSLN) and Constitutional Liberal Party (PLC) deputies. By 6.30pm no vote had been taken.

The trouble began at 8.30am when the PLC announced that the Sandinista deputy Gerardo Miranda had decided to abandon the FSLN bench and join into the Liberal party bench. With Miranda's vote lost to the FSLN, PLC candidate for the National Assembly President Enrique Quiñonez would have been assured the 47 vote majority necessary to win. Before the session could proceed any further, arguments between the FSLN and PLC deputies broke out with several FSLN representatives shouting insults at their former colleague Miranda. The rest of the ten hour session consisted of lots of shouting and little decision making.

After the session closed at 6.30pm, however, deputy Miranda held a press conference accompanied by leader of the Sandinista party Daniel Ortega at which he announced his return to the FSLN bench claiming he had been "carrying out an exploratory mission within the PLC with the aim of infiltrating myself into their ranks in order to boycott Quiñonez' candidacy for president of the National Assembly." Prior to the press conference Ortega held a closed meeting with Miranda which lasted over two hours.

Quiñonez held an almost simultaneous press conference in which he announced that he had decided against standing for president of the National Assembly in the elections, which will now take place on January 11, and that the Liberal bench would be supporting President Bolaños' Blue and White bench candidate Miguel Lopez.

It was rumored during the evening of January 9 that Ortega had threatened to send Liberal party leader Arnoldo Aleman back to jail if the Liberal bench did not agree to vote for a minority party candidate instead of Quiñonez. It now appears that the presidency of the Assembly will be disputed between the Nicaraguan Liberal Alliance-Conservative Party (ALNPC) candidate Maria Eugenia Sequiera (who has the support of her own party and the 38 Sandinista deputies) and Miguel Lopez for the Blue and White bench. The motives behind Miranda's one day abandonment of the Sandinista bench are still unclear as demonstrated by the January 10 headlines "Miranda: Spy or Traitor?"

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Topic 2: At Least Half a Million Nicaraguan Adults Cannot Vote

In an interview with La Prensa, Dionisio Palacios, the former director of the department of the Supreme Electoral Council (CSE) responsible for issuing identity cards and updating the electoral roles, claimed that at least 500,000 Nicaraguans (15% of the voting population) have no identity card and are therefore unable to exercise their right to vote.

Palacios says that there are at least 109,000 cases of unresolved identity card applications (applications which have some sort of irregularity) some of which have been "lost" in CSE archives, and around 103,000 identity cards in CSE offices across the country which have never been picked up by their owners. He estimates the number of Nicaraguans who have never applied for an identity card to be around 300,000. These cases are usually the result of extreme poverty (identity card applications are not free of charge) or the lack of access to the CSE offices for people who live in very remote areas. He said that the electoral roles are "far from accurate" and include the names of citizens who no longer live in Nicaragua, citizens who are serving jail sentences (and are therefore deprived of their political rights) and people who have died.

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Topic 3: Water Price to Go Up While Managua Suffers Water Cut-Offs

The Nicaraguan Aqueduct and Sewerage Company ENACAL has confirmed that the cost of water for Nicaragua's consumers will go up by 13% raise on Feb. 19. Luis Debayle Solis, President of ENACAL, confirmed that, answering a request by President Enrique Bolaños, the increase was postponed until mid-February. The President said in December that he wanted to look for alternatives to the rate increase, but apparently Debayle, a descendent of the Somoza dynasty, did not find any.

In December Leonor Midence of LIDECONIC (the Nicaraguan League for Defense of Consumer Rights) and Vilma Nuñez of CENIDH (the Nicaraguan Human Rights Center) submitted an appeal to the Supreme Court against INAA's decision to authorize the 13% increase. According to Nuñez and Midence, INAA broke the conditions of a Supreme Court ruling of 2002 which mandated that consumer defense organizations should be permitted to participate in INAA's evaluation prior to authorizing a price hike.

On January 4 Ruth Herrera, Coordinator of the Consumer Defense Network, announced her organization's plans to submit a similar appeal against INAA's authorization of the increase together with an appeal to the Supreme Court against the Nicaraguan Energy Institute's (INE) authorization of a 7% rate increase on January 16.

Meanwhile, around half of the 1.5 million people living in Managua have been affected by water shortages over the last few weeks. Last month the Nicaraguan Aqueduct and Sewerage Company (ENACAL) announced that several neighborhoods in the western part of the city would be affected by water rationing for an indefinite period of time due to the historically low level of the Asososca Lagoon (Crater Lake) which provides water for this part of the capital. In recent weeks neighborhoods in the eastern and central parts of Managua have also been affected by water shortages due to technical problems in seven ENACAL pumping stations.

In 2000 the Nicaraguan government committed itself, under the United Nations Millennium Goals, to reduce the number of citizens without access to clean running water by half by the year 2015. Currently 50% of the Nicaraguan population does not have access to clean running water, and during the last five years little if any progress has been made towards reducing this percentage.

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Topic 4: Still No End in Sight for Health Sector Strike; IMF Mandates Only Minimal Salary Increase

Although there has been little media coverage of the health sector strike over the last few weeks it is still going strong. On January 14 the Nicaraguan population will have completed two months without access to care in public hospitals or health centers. While the Pro Salary Doctors Federation demands a 70% pay raise for its members and the Health Workers Federation FETSALUD a 100% raise, the Ministry of Health (MINSA) insists that only a 15% pay raise is possible. As has been admitted by several public officials, the reason the authorities cannot offer more than a 15% raise is because the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has prohibited the Nicaraguan government from raising public sector workers' salaries above the rate of inflation. Since savings from international debt cancellation under Highly Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) were supposedly conditioned on using the money for poverty reduction, the IMF position would seem to violate its own conditions.

Both the Pro Salary Doctors Federation and FETSALUD have severely criticized this IMF policy and the government's inability even to question the relevance of the policy within the Nicaraguan context. Elio Artola, Coordinator of the Pro Salary Doctors Federation, informed the press that a representative of the Federation will be traveling to Washington within the next few weeks to discuss this matter with IMF officials.

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This hotline is prepared from the Nicaragua News Service and other sources. To receive a more extensive weekly summary of the news from Nicaragua by e-mail or postal service, send a check for $60.00 to Nicaragua Network, 1247 E St., SE, Washington, DC 20003. We can be reached by phone at 202-544-9355.