People's Democracy

THE unexpected defeat of the Left in the Nicaraguan elections held in the second week of November, is yet another sordid political saga in the recent history of this small country. And yet again, the American role has been crucial. Till last month, Daniel Ortega, the candidate of the Opposition, led in the opinion polls. All indications were that Ortega and the Sandinistas were all set for a return to power, after being in the Opposition for more than a decade.

But Ortega, the former guerilla and hero of the liberation struggle that had ousted the corrupt Samoza dictatorship, is still a "bete noire" of the Americans, though the former guerilla leader had gone out of his way in recent times to moderate his radical rhetoric, and prove to the domestic audience and the international community that he had become a social democrat ready to accept the inevitability of market reforms.

On his third attempt to win back the presidency, Ortega had stood on the ticket of an alliance called the National Convergence, consisting of the Sandinistas and some centrist parties. The right wing Liberal Constitutional Party that had been in power since 1990, was mired in corruption and other misdeeds. Its popularity was at an all time low. But blatant American meddling coupled with electoral malpractices, enabled its candidate, Enrique Bolanos to emerge as the eventual winner.

Bolanos is a rich businessman and landowner, who served as Vice-president in the outgoing government. The Bush administration, despite being preoccupied by the war it has been conducting since early October, has still found the time and money to expend on tiny Nicaragua, to ensure that its former ideological enemy, the Sandinistas, are not returned back to power through the ballot box.

Nicaragua’s economic infrastructure is in shambles. Corruption has never been as rampant as it is now. The outgoing president Arnoldo Aleman, is known to have filled his own coffers while bankrupting the country. The Cuban American National Foundation (CANF), based in Florida and notorious for its sponsorship of terrorist activities against Cuba, had generously funded Aleman’s election campaign five years ago. Now, the CANF is alleging that Aleman had pocketed 2.5 million dollars it had given for the campaign to keep out the Sadinistas in 1996.

This is only one illustration of the venality of Aleman and his cronies. Aleman’s wealth has officially increased nine-fold since 1990. He has steadfastly refused to reveal the source of his income, claiming constitutional immunity. He built a ten-mile highway which connects his residence in Managua to three of his farms in the countryside.

Since 1990, Nicaragua has been receiving the highest per capita aid than any other country in the world – 5 billion dollars in the last ten years. Yet real average wages for Nicaraguans are about 1,200 dollars a year. In the rural areas, agricultural labourers are said to get around 420 dollars a year, which amounts to slightly more than a dollar a day. The GNP of the country today is at 2.5 billion dollars, which is less than half that of the other central American countries.

The collapse in the international price of coffee this year has added to the woes of the common people. Many coffee plantations have retrenched their workers, adding to the record unemployment rate. In 1998, Hurricane "Mitch" had caused unprecedented devastation to the country’s infrastructure. International aid donors had pitched in an additional 1.5 billion dollars but most of the money seems to have ended in bank accounts in Miami and elsewhere.

The Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) had effected radical reforms while in power from 1979 to 1989. During that period the proportion of land held by large landowners fell from 41 per cent to 7 per cent, with the land and properly distributed to poor peasants. Other important reforms were carried out in the industrial sector.

But the open American hostility towards the Sandinistas, led to a dirty war orchestrated from Washington. The Reagan Administration used terrorism on an unprecedented scale against the tiny Central American country. The American trained 40,000 Contras as they were called, created chaos and mayhem on an unprecedented scale in Nicaragua and the region.

To finance the terrorists, the US administration had generated illicit funds. The "Contragate" scandal which engulfed the Reagan Administration is testimony to that. The Americans had gone to the extent of mining Nicaragua’s ports. The International Court in the Hague had pronounced the US guilty of infringing Nicaragua’s sovereignty. In the US-sponsored terrorist campaign waged at Washington’s behest, 50,000 people were killed.

Some of the key players in the Reagan Administration involved in the terrorists campaign against Nicaragua are now holding key posts in the new Bush Administration which is today busy waging its so-called "war against terrorism" in Afghanistan. The most prominent character is John Negroponte, now America’s permanent representative in the UN.

Negroponte is known to have mastermined the counter-revolutionary war in Nicaragua from his base in the Honduras, where he served as US ambassador in the eighties. At the same time he was busy backing right wing death squads responsible for countless atrocities in neighbouring EI Salvador.

Another Reagan-era official involved in the "dirty war" in Nicaragua and EI Salvador, who has a prominent place in the Bush Administration, is Elliot Abrams. He is the head of the Office for Democracy and Human Rights"(sic!). He is the same man who pleaded guilty before the American Congress for lying over the conduct of the "war" in Central America.

The Bush administration had made it clear to the Nicaraguan people that a victory for Ortega could lead to serious consequences for their country. In recent elections all over Latin America, the Left has been doing well, and victory for the Sandinistas would have bolstered the trend. Jeb Bush, brother of the present president George Bush, who had rigged the elections for his brother in the state of Florida which he governed during the American presidential elections, wrote an article criticising Ortega because he "neither understands nor embraces the basic concepts of freedom, democracy and free enterprise".

He brazenly goes on to add that Ortega is close "to states and individuals who shelter and condone international terrorism". The ruling party showed commercials on TV showing the World Trade Tower explosions juxtaposed with pictures of Ortega, Muammar Gaddafi and Fidel Castro. What the Bush Administration was trying to do in a despicable way was to link the Sandinistas with terrorism. Senior US officials came visiting Nicaragua as the election date neared, threatening dire consequences for the country in case the Sandinista came back to power.

Further, the American ambassador to Nicaragua was seen on the same platform with the ruling party candidate, and donated American food was handed out to voters during the campaign. The Americans had earlier persuaded a conservative third party candidate to withdraw, so that the right-wing votes could be consolidated.

In the week preceding the elections, three American politicians led by the arch-conservative, Jesse Helms, introduced a resolution in the Congress calling on the American president to re-evaluate his policy towards Nicaragua in case of a Sandinista victory. The former American president, Jimmy Carter, who was in Nicargua as an election observer, went to the extent of stating that he disapproved of "statements and actions by other countries that might tend to influence the votes of people of another sovereign nation".

Although the Bush Administration has managed to keep out Ortega from the presidency, the Sandinistas have not done too badly at the polls. Despite the covert and overt use of American money power and manipulation from the highest levels, Ortega won 42 per cent of the votes, and the Sandinistas also have a strong presence in the new parliament. Further through a pact entered into last year, the Liberals and the Sandinistas had given them joint control over the judiciary.