TUESDAY, JULY 22, 2008
Nicaragua Network Hotline (July 22, 2008)
Topics in this hotline include:1. Nicaraguans celebrate 29th anniversary of July 19
2. Nicaragua Network condemns MRS apparent call for President Ortega's assassination
3. Therapeutic abortion appeal goes to the Supreme Court
4. Government criticizes NGOs financed by US and European “empires”
5. Farmers and merchants take over offices of micro-lending companies
Topic 1: Nicaraguans celebrate 29th anniversary of July 19
Police estimated the crowd at 300,000 as Nicaraguans celebrated the 29th anniversary of the triumph over the Somoza dictatorship on July 19. Paraguay President-elect Fernando Lugo, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, Honduran President Manuel Zelaya, and Cuban Vice-President Esteban Lazo joined President Daniel Ortega at the celebration which filled the Plazas of John Paul II and the Revolution and several blocks of the surrounding streets in Managua. Official delegations were also sent by Brazil, Ecuador, Bolivia, Guatemala and the Dominican Republic.
President Ortega said in his speech, “The Sandinista government fell on February 25, 1990, but the Revolution never fell, the Sandinista Front never fell, the Revolution never surrendered, the Revolution never sold out, and we continued resisting during those 16 years, a resistance against neo-liberalism, against the tyranny of global capitalism headed by the yanqui empire." Ortega said that the three right-wing Liberal party governments which followed him tore to pieces the benefits of the Sandinista Revolution, privatized public services, cut education and healthcare, but the people, the Sandinista Front, resisted. He said they have now begun the implementation of “a new model," one with justice and fairness, that helps all Nicaraguans to progress, "not only oligarchs who sell out the mother country and the great capitalists who enjoy the benefits of our wealth."
The celebration on July 19 dwarfed the July 17 celebration in Leon organized by the Sandinista Renovation Movement (MRS). La Prensa put that crowd at “hundreds” and El Nuevo Diario set the number of participants at 8,000.
"Thanks to the FSLN we are living in a free Nicaragua," said Gerald Narváez, a 36 year old salesman in a popular market. He said he remembers stories his family told him about the repression of the dictatorship. Thousands of Nicaraguans were assassinated by the Somoza family military from 1934 to 1979. Many who participated in the heroic popular insurrection attend the celebration every year in Managua, in support of their party. Thousands of buses and other vehicles caravan to the capital city from every municipality in the country. "I was in mountains four years so there would be improvements for the people," said former guerrilla fighter Bosco Castellón, who clarified that he is “a Sandinista by conviction, but not a Danielista” referring to those who give their allegiance foremost to President Ortega.
Topic 2: Nicaragua Network condemns MRS apparent call for President Ortega's assassination
At the Sandinista Renovation Movement (MRS) 29th anniversary celebration in Leon on July 19, former MRS president Dora Maria Tellez addressed the crowd before a banner picturing red splattered photographs of Ortega and Anastasio Somoza Debayle with a slogan “Ortega and Somoza: The Same Thing.” In the lower right was the name Rigoberto Lopez P., the poet who killed the first Somoza, Anastasio Somoza Garcia. Tellez harshly criticized the Ortega government. She said that her party is going to fight until there is democracy in Nicaragua “or the Ortega government changes or he falls.”
The Nicaragua Network was outraged and concerned several weeks ago when we received an emailed poster with the same artwork from the office of 2006 MRS presidential candidate Edmundo Jarquin. Believing that the transparent appeal for the assassination of President Ortega was the work of rogue elements, the Nicaragua Network wrote to and called several leaders of the MRS asking them to disavow the poster and to expel those who produced and distributed it. We received no response about the poster. The use of the banner at their public celebration makes it obvious that it represents the official MRS position.
The MRS banner far exceeds international norms of political speech and in the United States would at least earn an investigation by the Secret Service if not criminal charges. The Nicaragua Network condemns these messages in the strongest possible terms and demands that the MRS abandon them and clarify publically that they support elections, not assassination, as the method to transfer political power.
To judge for yourself the conclusions we have drawn and the seriousness with which we view this issue, send an email to nicanet@AFGJ.org asking for photographs of the offending poster and banner.
Topic 3: Government criticizes NGOs financed by US and European “empires”
Speaking in Leon on the night of July 18, President Daniel Ortega criticized some non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in Nicaragua. He said that some NGOs were truly at the service of the people but there were others that were at the service of the counterrevolution and financed by the “United States empire” or the “European empire.” He went on to say, “They think that they are going to be able to overthrow this [government] that they call a dictatorship, a dictatorship because the people are in power, because we are organizing the Councils of Citizen Power (CPC), a dictatorship because we are organizing the cabinets of citizen power; that for them is a dictatorship. For them it is unacceptable that the poor be the owners of power.”
Also last week, a study carried out by Claudia Pineda and Nils-Sjard Shulz and funded by the Foundation for International Relations and Exterior Dialogue (a European-Latin American organization), was released which noted that, after the first year of the Ortega government, planning and mediation for carrying out dialogue within the international community and for effective aid “are suffering grave setbacks that question the continuity of the advances achieved under the Liberal government of Enrique Bolaños.” Since the Bolaños government's slavish allegiance to transnational capital and US government objectives was a factor in the election of the FSLN in 2006, there is little question of the right-wing political perspective of authors of this study.
According to the study, at the only meeting with donors, the government presented general outlines of its fight against poverty which were “not congruent” with the National Development Plan designed during Bolaños presidency and which was supposedly valid until 2010. Since the National Development Plan did not include government support for the small and medium agricultural sector and poverty alleviation, both priorities of the Ortega government, its shelving of the plan should not be a surprise.
In related news, on July 16 the Civil Coordinator (a network of many NGOs) held another march against the policies of the government demanding the resignation of Daniel Ortega, the second march organized by civil society groups in less than a month. [A third march was organized by the Sandinista Renovation Movement and the Conservative Party.] The majority of the marchers said that they were protesting the high cost of food and the lack of jobs. But the organizers of the march, among them human rights groups, feminist groups, intellectuals, and some labor unions said that the protest was against the closing of democratic spaces, corruption and the “dirty pact” between Ortega and former President Arnoldo Aleman.
Topic 4: Therapeutic abortion appeal goes to the Supreme Court
A large group of women headed by the Nicaraguan Center for Human Rights (CENIDH) on July 15 filed a claim with the Supreme Court of partial unconstitutionality against the new Penal Code that criminalized therapeutic abortion. The group maintained that this new norm “violates principles and fundamental rights of the constitutional and legal order.” The new Code took effect July 9 and establishes imprisonment for up to eight years for those who carry out a therapeutic abortion. Abortion to save the life and health of the woman had been allowed for over 100 years under the old Penal Code, but was reversed in 2006 during the government of Enrique Bolaños, unfortunately with FSLN support.
The Strategic Group for the Legalization of Therapeutic Abortion requested that the Court demand that National Assembly President René Núñez and President Daniel Ortega be called to respond to the core issues in this denunciation. The group states that the new law “violates the rights of life, health and human dignity, and the freedom from cruelty,” is “inhuman and degrading,” and is against “autonomy, individual freedom and the free exercise of the [medical] profession.” The group's suit added that the law “does not take into account those cases in which the pregnant woman is physically or mentally disabled and the termination of her pregnancy is medically required to save her life.”
Topic 5: Farmers and merchants take over offices of micro-lending companies
On July 14, farmers and merchants in Jalapa, Nueva Segovia, took over local branches of the private micro-lending company Fundenuse and the office of the Procredit Bank and held the office staff hostage until the managers agreed to negotiate at 8:00pm that evening. In Rivas, borrowers behind on their payments supported by leaders of the Consumer Defense Network protested in front of the offices of micro-lending businesses demanding repayment flexibility. These were seen as the first manifestations of the impact of a speech by President Daniel Ortega the previous Saturday in which he called on debtors to take over the branches of the credit businesses if they did not listen to their demands.
Former Sandinista mayor of Jalapa and coordinator of the Movement of Farmers and Merchants of the North, Omar Vilchez, justified the Jalapa action saying that the manager of Fundenuse refused to speak with the leaders and listen to their demands for restructuring of their debts. In Rivas, the Consumer Defense Network organized a Committee of Customers of Financial Services to negotiate with the managers of these loan companies so that borrowers do not lose the collateral for their loans. The Network has formed similar committees in the towns of Potosí and Tola.
Criticism of the government on this issue has come in from both the left and right. Sandinista Renovation Movement (MRS) National Assembly Deputy Monica Baltodano said that Ortega should fulfill his campaign promise and set up a Development Bank instead of leading farmers into a culture of non-payment of debts. “President Ortega has enough resources nationally and from Venezuelan cooperation to confront this serious problem for all the producers in the country.”
Former President Arnoldo Aleman of the Constitutional Liberal Party (PLC) criticized the lack of interest on the part of the government in pushing to get the Development Bank up and running and said that Ortega is trying instead to provide options through the private lending agency Alba-Caruna, connected to the Sandinista Party. He said that this is one of the issues that demonstrate Daniel Ortega's “incapacity to govern.”
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. Our web site is: www.nicanet.org. To subscribe to the Hotline, send an e-mail to nicanet@afgj.org
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