Nicanet - The Nicaragua Network

Nicaragua Network Hotlines for April 24, 2007

News topics covered in this Hotline include:

Topic 1: New government completes first 100 days to mixed reviews


The new Sandinista government completed 100 days in power last week to mixed reviews. Sandinista René Núñez, president of the National Assembly, said that “the government passed the test.” He stated that most important was that the government had taken steps to fulfill the obligation established in the Nicaraguan constitution (violated by successive governments beginning in 1990) to provide citizens with free basic education and health care. “The government is looking for ways to reestablish free health care, including medicine and surgery,” said Núñez, adding that “the great majority of children now have access to the classroom.”

Núñez said that there had been predictions that the severe energy crisis the country had been suffering would worsen at the end of the dry season in March and April, but that the Ortega administration began working on the problem even before taking office and now “it is being overcome.”

When asked why the new government’s budget differed little from the Bolaños’ budget, Núñez blamed the Bolaños government for failing to have it approved before Daniel Ortega took office, as it should have been according to the budget calendar. The new government would have had great difficulty in changing the budget, Nuñez said, because it only had the extra money that resulted from lowering the so-called “mega-salaries,” from combining certain state institutions, and from the cancellation by the Inter-American Development Bank of debt owed that international organism. Combining these savings with donations and loans, he said, “We had a total of US$70 million from which we had to fund support for the schools where school autonomy was ending, the school breakfast program, the literacy program set to begin in May, and the Zero Hunger Program directed at poor peasant farm families for food production.”

Núñez said that the new government has had difficulty in communicating its positions to the media. It is interesting that in Nicaragua, neither of the major political parties, the FSLN and the Constitutional Liberal Party (PLC) have their own newspaper, so that almost everything the rest of the world reads about Nicaragua is filtered through media that is intractably hostile to the so-called “parties of the pact.” He added, “I can’t say that the media has been kind to the government; there has been a certain hostility that government officials should ignore in order to have a steady flow of information to the media even if they are hostile.” When asked about the changes in the seal used on official documents, which has been changed into something abstract and colorful, Núñez said that several political parties have dedicated their time to criticism of government actions of secondary importance. He noted that when three of poet Rubén Darío’s manuscripts were auctioned off for a very small sum after the bank collapse several years ago, there was no protest. Now, when Daniel Ortega gave two manuscripts that spoke of Simón Bolivar to President Chavez of Venezuela, these parties raised a loud cry of protest.

The MRS Alliance (composed of the Sandinista Renovation Movement, the Movement to Rescue Sandinismo, the Nicaraguan Socialist Party, the Autonomous Women’s Movement, and the Movement for Change, Reflection, Ethics and Action), which holds only three seats in the 92 member National Assembly, classed the new government as authoritarian and family-based claiming that it was a serious threat to democracy, public liberties, economic progress and the alleviation of poverty. Edmundo Jarquín, recently elected general coordinator of the alliance, said, “it is our duty to warn that we could be advancing toward a cycle of social and political conflicts and hostility toward other countries.” While the Nicaragua Network remained neutral in last fall’s presidential race and we have historical relationships with many people now active in the MRS Alliance, we find much of the criticism of the Ortega government’s efforts to date to be excessively partisan and failing to recognize the positive moves to restore the “preferential option for the poor” that characterized the first Sandinista government.

Jarquin added, however, that the new president had a chance to take the correct path and that the MRS was calling on him to make changes. He said that the continuation in force of the Framework Law and the approval of Law 290, which refer to the powers of the executive branch, indicate the intention to concentrate power in the presidency, causing institutional disequilibrium, especially with relation to the police and the army. “Along with this we see the intention to establish mechanisms of social control under the Councils of Citizen Power, which would have a tendency to undermine spaces of democratic participation that have been developing.” The jury is still out on the Councils of Citizen Power, but they seem to be modeled on similar neighborhood-based bodies in Venezuela that were necessary to overcome an entrenched bureaucracy and a hostile elite civil society. Seventeen years of neoliberal governments in Nicaragua have populated the bureaucracy with right-wing professionals and a considerable portion, but by no means all, of civil society groups have gotten used to living considerably above the poverty level on funding from Europe, the US government, or international NGOs.

While applauding the announcement that fees for education and health had been abolished, Jarquin said that the MRS Alliance felt that the government’s programs were plagued with inefficiency, disorder and demagoguery. The Nicaraguan Center for Human Rights (CENIDH) made similar accusations. CENIDH President Vilma Núñez said, “The balance of these first hundred days is worrisome, full of unanswered questions and doubts about tendencies toward authoritarianism and nepotism.” The head of CENIDH criticized Ortega for appointing his wife as head of the Council on Communication and Citizenship, which, she said had wide powers, adding that nepotism is a form of corruption. In the area of economics, Núñez said that “The government’s economic plans seem to be based on the generous support of Venezuela,” adding that the public is ignorant about how the more than US$400 million will be handled, given that it is not included in the official budget.” Núñez applauded the reduction of salaries for high-level officials and the elimination of fees for health and education.

Former ambassador to Venezuela Roger Guevara lamented “confrontations” with Colombia, Costa Rica, United States, Honduras and Mexico. Guevara criticized Ortega’s “excessive and apparently unconditional alliance” with Venezuelan President Chavez. However, Oscar René Vargas said that it was because of Nicaragua’s relationship with Venezuela that the country had not gone into a recession. He added that the electricity plants that Caracas sent to Managua had reduced the energy deficit to five percent of national demand, which in turn will prevent the loss of US$150 million in the first half of this year. Cairo Manuel Lopez acknowledged that the relationship with Venezuela and Nicaragua’s inclusion in the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA) “could result in economic growth for the country.” He also praised the announcement of the building of a refinery by Venezuela in the western part of Nicaragua.


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Topic 2: Document lays out FSLN vision for future

 According to an internal Sandinista party document obtained by the newspaper La Prensa, the FSLN has plans to re-nationalize public services including the generation and distribution of electricity, which is now in the hands of the Spanish transnational corporation Union Fenosa. The document is entitled “For a Project of Public Welfare, Reactivation of Production and Social Transformation” and is a training document being used by the FSLN’s Department of Political Education, according to sources who did not want their names revealed.

The training manual describes a government project for the future that would include:
1. National and regional self-determination combined with Latin American integration;
2. Strengthening and nationalizing public services;
3. Redistribution of wealth by means of a more progressive tax system;
4. Combining representative democracy with direct democracy by means of councils of citizens; and
5. Development based on small and medium farmers, workers and neighborhoods by promoting associations, agro-industrial self-management, energy development, and construction.

The document says that these goals will be achieved through “ideological and cultural debate and a policy of broad alliances based on national unity.” The document speaks of forming a state based on the symbiosis of government and associations (of small and medium sized farmers, workers, neighborhoods) instead of the present one of government and corporations. The goal would be to institutionalize two pillars of society: 1) the citizens’ councils in the civil-political arena and 2) the associations in the economic arena. The document states that “there cannot be a new social model without a new political subject and a new economic subject.”

If the Sandinista government can achieve these laudable goals, it could transform Nicaragua into the dream that drew many of us into the solidarity movement in the first place.


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Topic 3: Ortega hopes to be free of the IMF in five years


President Daniel Ortega said in a meeting with his cabinet and journalists that his government hoped to be free of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in five years. “You can be sure of this and it will be a blessing,” he said, adding that the government has to negotiate with the IMF in order to be free of it. He said, “We cannot be forever demanding that the people of this country tighten their belts which is what has been happening in recent years.” The next round of negotiations with the IMF begins April 30.

Economists stated that the task of obtaining freedom from the IMF will be a difficult one. Nestor Avendaño noted that the country still needs concessionary loans from the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), and the IMF itself “because our export capacity is still insufficient.” He added that the country still has a substantial budget deficit that must be lowered. “I would like our country to achieve full sovereignty over its decisions, but we continue to be a Heavily Indebted Poor Country,” he said, using the term coined by the IMF for poor countries scheduled for debt relief under IMF conditions.

Antenor Rosales, president of Nicaragua’s Central Bank, said that in the second round of talks with the IMF, Nicaragua hopes to achieve an agreement. After a meeting with the board of directors of the Superior Council on Private Enterprise (COSEP), the big business group, Rosales reiterated the government’s position that it will make payments on the bonds known as CENIS, for their initials in Spanish. The bonds, which were created to provide often illegitimate compensation to people whose property was confiscated under the revolution and to bail out bank investors who lost their money through fraudulent bank failures under the Aleman government. A number of economists demand that they be renegotiated at a lower interest rate to enable the government to invest in poverty reduction.

Rodrigo de Rato, managing director of the IMF, said in Murcia, Spain that the economic program presented to his institution by the Ortega government contained “some solid bases” for arriving at an agreement. He noted that Nicaragua had “serious problems of integration into the world economy,” but that debt cancellation by the IMF, the World Bank and the IDB is positive. “We are not in a hurry,” said Anoop Singh, IMF director for Latin America. “We would like to give the new government as much time as it needs to develop its economic program,” he added. The previous agreement between Nicaragua and the IMF expired on December 12, 2006.



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Topic 4: Education Minister de Castilla appears before National Assembly

Minister of Education Miguel de Castilla appeared before several National Assembly committees on April 18, telling deputies that the government doesn’t have the money to raise the salaries of the almost 40,000 teachers in the country by US$30 per month. A non-Sandinista teachers union on strike in Managua, El Viejo, Corinto, Chichigalpa, Matagalpa, El Tuma-La Dalia, San Ramon and Waslala are demanding a raise in that amount retroactive to January. National Assembly members noted that the government has budgeted a raise for teachers of US$16.42 per month. Francisco Aguirre, a Liberal deputy who chairs the economic affairs committee, suggested to the leaders of Unidad Sindical Magisterial (USM), that they negotiate with the Education Ministry and agree on a smaller raise.

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Topic 5: Disgruntled workers challenge ENACAL management; Herrera rejects charges


Several workers and union members, after being fired by the Nicaraguan Water and Sewerage Company (ENACAL), asked the Comptroller General’s Office to investigate supposed irregularities in that agency. The workers said that, even though the water company was in a state of emergency, they didn’t realize that they were supposed to work during Holy Week, which is normally a holiday in Nicaragua. They also accused ENACAL of using pipes as part of its emergency plan that had not been properly cleaned and that were exposing the public to harm. The workers said that there were firings from the agency every day.

ENACAL President Ruth Herrera, however, said that the workers were to have free the week after Easter in exchange for working Holy Week but did not show up on their assigned days. She denied that there have been many firings, noting that out of 4,000 employees, only about 100 had been let go, 40 because there was no budget for their work. Engineer Guillermo Arauz said that the pipes used by the emergency plan crews had been cleaned and treated with chlorine. “We have received no complaints about contamination of the water,” he said.

The workers claimed that there were acts of corruption such as ENACAL promising to eliminate the payment for use of cell phones, but instead contracting for 100 new phones. Herrera said that they had changed telephone companies, negotiating a better deal. The number of phones distributed to staff was reduced from 300 to 100 and the number of minutes paid for by ENACAL was reduced by 2/3. In the central office, Herrera said, the number of staff members with ENACAL cell phones was reduced from 80 to 10.

Meanwhile, Herrera accused the electricity company Union Fenosa of causing interruptions in energy distribution which stops the pumps at ENACAL wells, affecting the distribution of water in numerous parts of Managua. “We are tired of sending reports and we urge the comptroller, the National Assembly, the executive branch and the judges to get involved,” she said.

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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.