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On 5/25/11 4:43 AM, John oneill wrote:
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Daniel Ortega became a victim of his
own success. His socialist revolution brought democracy to Nicaragua,
but the people refused to elect him. In 2007 he finally became president
of the country, and now he is launching a power grab for himself and his
family that is breathtaking in its ruthlessness, writes TOM HENNIGAN in
Managua
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/magazine/2011/0507/1224295952855.htm
This was behind a firewall. Here's the text:
The Irish Times
May 7, 2011 Saturday
After the revolution
SECTION: MAGAZINE; Magazine Features; Pg. 19
LENGTH: 3404 words
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Daniel Ortega became a victim of his
own success. His socialist revolution brought democracy to Nicaragua,
but the people refused to elect him. In 2007 he finally became president
of the country, and now he is launching a power grab for himself and his
family that is breathtaking in its ruthlessness, writes TOM HENNIGANin
Managua
ITH HIS SHORT-SLEEVED shirt open to the navel and a toothpick in the
corner of his mouth, el Chapiollo navigates a way through Managua s
unruly traffic with an air of authority that belies the fact that his
car is one of the most dilapidated on the road.
Maneouvering with a mixture of precision and measured aggression that
has other drivers backing off, he recounts his soldier s life: At 14
years of age my family sent me to a military academy. But a year later
my cousin warned me the army was doomed and told me to get out before
everything went to hell. So I ran away and joined the guerrillas in the
mountains.
It was sound advice. In July 1979, the guerrillas routed the military
and entered Managua, overthrowing the Somoza dictatorship. Nicaragua s
Sandinista revolution was underway.
El Chapiollo joined the new national army and spent the 1980s fighting
the Contras, counter-revolutionaries backed by the Reagan administration
in Washington, which viewed the Sandinistas and their leader Daniel
Ortega as a Soviet Trojan horse in the heart of Central America.
Battled hardened, el Chapiollo would be sent to Cuba for training and,
on his return home, was assigned to an elite special-forces battalion,
engaging the Contras alongside Soviet and Libyan advisers in the same
mountains he had fought over as a teenage guerrilla. The Contra war was
very ugly. They were more terrorists than soldiers. So when Ortega lost
the presidential election in 1990, there was a general feeling of
frustration in the army. After so many deaths we felt the people were
ungrateful and that our sacrifice was all for nothing.
He remained in the military where widespread Sandinista sympathies were
at odds with those of the pro-Washington presidents who succeeded
Ortega. They even sent us to Iraq to fight in the imperialists war! he
says incredulously. All the soldiers were all against it. But we went.
Then, after 16 long years in opposition and three presidential election
defeats, Ortega finally led the Sandinistas back to power when he won
the 2006 presidential election. Today, all over Managua, his smiling
face beams down from billboards proclaiming: Viva la Revolución!
But asked if he is happy about his old comandante s return to power, el
Chapiollo, a civilian again after 27 years, pauses. Then, speaking with
the same deliberate precision as his driving, he gives his answer.
No. Today I am still a Sandinista but I am not an Ortegista. Ortega has
betrayed the revolution. He is no longer a socialist but a capitalist.
He has turned into a caudillo [a dictator with a military background].
Daniel has become a new Somoza. The people need to open their eyes and
see what is happening.
IT WAS UNDER Ortega s leadership that the Sandinistas were supposed to
have ended Nicaragua s long tradition of rule by caudillo strongmen with
the toppling of the Somozas. The family, which used a mix of
paternalism, corruption and state violence to build a hereditary
dictatorship that lasted more than four decades, was meant to be the
last of a dictatorial tradition that had plagued the country since
independence from Spain in 1821.
As well as socialism, the revolution of 1979 brought democracy to
Nicaragua. The presidential elections of 1984 and 1990 were widely seen
as free and fair. Expected to be comfortably re-elected beforehand,
Ortega s defeat in 1990 shocked most observers, domestic and foreign it
was, perhaps, the best endorsement of the integrity of the country s
fledging democracy. But ever since peacefully leaving office, Ortega has
been slowly rewinding the tape of Nicaraguan history, back to before the
revolution, and in doing so, he is reviving the spectre of caudillismo.
Although the anti-imperialist rhetoric of the 1980s remains a staple of
his speeches, by the time of his re-election in 2006 Ortega had
abandoned most of his socialist policies and he now has an increasingly
cosy relationship with the country s business community.
But this economic swing away from socialism is not what most worries
former allies, opponents and local observers (many of them have also
given up on Marx). Instead, it is his increasingly voracious appetite
for power that is, in the words of one former ally, completely
unrestrained by scruples .
One of the most frequently mentioned examples of this is Ortega s sudden
discovery of religion and his reconciliation with one of his staunchest
enemies from the 1980s, Cardinal Miguel Obando y Bravo. In 2005 the old
cardinal officiated at the Catholic wedding ceremony of Ortega and his
wife of 27 years in Managua s cathedral.
To cement his entente with the Catholic hierarchy ahead of the 2006
election, Ortega ordered Sandinistas in the National Assembly to abandon
long-standing policy and vote in support of a law banning abortion in
all circumstances. This was a project close to Obando y Bravo s heart,
and it made Nicaragua one of only a handful of states, including the
Vatican City, which does not allow for the procedure, even to protect
the life of the mother.
Even more alienating for many old comrades was Ortega s pact with
Arnoldo Alemán, a corrupt boss from the traditional Liberal party.
Alemán defeated Ortega in the 1996 presidential election only to be
convicted of looting the state for personal gain once his term ended.
Ortega, under pressure from within his party following a third
successive defeat in 2001 s presidential election, spied an opening and
proposed a mutually beneficial arrangement.
By uniting their respective blocks in the National Assembly, the two men
carved up the country s institutions between them, starting with the
Supreme Court, which they packed with loyal party hacks. As part of the
quid pro quo, the Sandinistas helped Alemán wriggle out of serving his
20-year jail sentence. In return, Ortega got the percentage of the vote
a presidential candidate needs to be elected lowered to 35. In 2006, he
won with just 38 per cent.
It feels strange to say it but Ortega s victory did not make me happy.
It left me cold, says el Chapiollo. Strange, after so many were killed
and maimed for our revolution.
IN MANAGUA, government officials do not return requests for interviews.
But things are more relaxed in the crowded municipal offices in the
coffee town of Jinotega. Every room seems full of people patiently
waiting in line or on benches clutching forms. With the blinds drawn
against the strong midday sun, the mayor s darkened office is a cool and
calm retreat from the commotion.
Here, Leónidas Centeno Rivera, a former guerrilla like el Chapiollo, and
Jinotega s Sandinista mayor, brusquely dismisses any notion that
Comandante Daniel has sold out.
Yes. Certain policies have changed. The situation in the 1980s was
different to now. In the 1980s the revolution was more dogmatic. We
wanted to nationalise the economy. Now this government is working with
the private sector, with the state, with workers and peasants and is a
government of consensus. But the Nicaraguan revolution continues. This
is the second stage of the revolution.
But Centeno s panoramic survey of a national consensus fails to touch on
the fact that he only holds his office thanks to widespread fraud
carried out by the Sandinistas in municipal elections in 2008. Electoral
rolls were massaged, ballot papers dumped in bins, and counting
suspended when the Sandinistas found themselves behind, only to
miraculously appear in front when counting restarted.
Electoral irregularities are common in many Latin American countries but
this was fraud of a different order. Asked how blatant it was, Maria
Celina Burgalin of local monitoring group Transparency and Ethics
reaches for a baseball metaphor: They knocked it out of the park.
In response, foreign governments suspended economic aid and opposition
supporters took to the streets. Ortega ordered gangs of Sandinista
supporters armed with machetes to tackle them. Cowed, the opposition
went home and Sandinista mayors were installed in dozens of
municipalities that no one believed they had won, including Jinotega and
the capital Managua.
In 1990 the Sandinistas bequeathed to the country a credible,
trustworthy electoral system. But now, 21 years later, we have one that
resembles that of the Somoza era, says Carlos Fernando Chamorro,
Nicaragua s leading independent journalist.
The son of a newspaper editor assassinated by the Somoza regime,
Chamorro edited Barricada Barricade the Sandinista newspaper during the
1980s. Even after his mother Violeta ran against and beat Ortega for the
presidency in 1990 he remained a loyal Sandinista, only for Ortega to
orchestrate his removal from Barricadain 1994.
While watching the crowds in Cairo demand the resignation of Hosni
Mubarak on CNN Español, Chamorro muses on the circular nature of his own
country s authoritarian history: Someone who was part of a revolutionary
project has now degraded into a traditional caudillo.
Although this small, stunningly beautiful country seems tranquil on the
surface, there is a growing sense of unease about the course of events.
Chamorro s office has been raided by the police on spurious warrants; El
Chapiollo does not want his real name appearing in foreign media.
In the city of Matagalpa, Mara makes the same request. Inspired by the
revolution, she joined the Sandinista youth movement as a teenager in
the 1980s. But, like so many others, she quit the party in the 1990s,
disillusioned with Ortega s leadership. She later founded an independent
woman s group in her poor neighbourhood in order to pressure the local
municipality to provide better services. After initial success, local
Sandinista women tried to take it over. Those of us who set up the group
prevented them at first. But there were threats and intimidation.
Eventually, I was forced to leave my home and flee the neighbourhood.
They now control the group. Asked how she feels now about her former
comrades she answers bluntly: Afraid.
Still passionate about the advances made during the revolution, what
most infuriates Mara is not the creep of authoritarianism but that it is
used in service not of socialism but in building up his own family
fortune. Big business is today very comfortable with Ortega in power.
Before, he confronted them, now he only wants his cut.
FAMOUSLY, SEVERAL OF the Sandinistas closest to Ortega have become
millionaires. His own family now reportedly holds an economic portfolio
that includes a television station, a luxury hotel in Managua and a
private security firm that signed lucrative contracts to guard public
buildings in Sandinista-controlled municipalities just days after being
set up.
Ortega has built up his economic assets with the help of Venezuela s
president Hugo Chávez. The two allies signed a cooperation agreement
that sees Nicaragua receive aid in the form of cheap oil, which Ortega
sells on at market prices. The IMF estimates the arrangement may be
worth up to 8 per cent of Nicaragua s GDP to Ortega. But no one knows
for sure, as the money does not appear in the country s budget.
Instead, it passes through a shadowy network of private joint ventures
that seem to have been designed with the goal of hiding the money trail.
This has led to the unusual situation of the IMF, a serial advocate of
privatisation, calling on a Latin American government to nationalise
companies in order to boost transparency. A letter from an opposition
member of the national assembly to President Chávez asking for
clarification about the arrangement went unanswered.
Ortega has an aversion to accountability, says Chamorro, whose reporting
has done much to expose Ortega s circle s growing economic power. He
claims that he is a revolutionary and that these private funds are
therefore at the service of the revolution. But it is great lie. There
is today no division between party and family.
Now, instead of attempting desperately needed structural reforms to the
health, education and tax systems, Nicaragua is experiencing an economic
return to the pre-revolutionary past.
While the circle around the president enriches itself and business is
left alone, social policy has regressed to old-fashioned paternalism.
All government projects now come swathed in the colours of Ortega s
party. The cash from Venezuela is helping fund the mass distribution of
zinc sheeting for roofing in slums. The poor are once again expected to
play the role of grateful recipients of largesse from public officials.
But after more than four years in power, and despite the aid from
Chávez, Ortega has proved unable to make any dent in the gap between his
country s human-development indicators and those of his regional
neighbours. Nicaragua is no nearer to escaping its ranking as the
western hemisphere s poorest nation after Haiti.
ASKED IF ORTEGA can still be even considered a left-wing leader, Dora
María Téllez struggles to hide her annoyance at the question: His
government is, frankly speaking, reactionary.
All this the electoral fraud, the personal enrichment, the violence is a
bloody mockery because we have to remember that this revolutionary
process that re-democratised Nicaragua was achieved with thousands of
deaths. Now we have a model in which Ortegismo has been recruited by
Somozismo.
Like Chamorro, Téllez is another former comrade of the president. Almost
a third of a century on, she is still instantly recognisable from
photographs of her as the 22-year-old medical student that helped lead a
guerrilla raid on the country s national assembly. They held its members
hostage until Téllez had negotiated the release of Sandinista prisoners
from the Somoza regime. The mission s success helped shatter the aura of
invincibility surrounding the dictatorship.
After its fall, Téllez would serve with distinction as the revolution s
health minister. Also like Chamorro, she was prominent among those
Sandinistas advocating internal reform in response to their loss in the
1990 election. This desire ran up against the refusal by hardliners
gathered around Ortega to relinquish control over the party machine.
Marginalised by a series of purges, she left and with others founded the
dissident Sandinista Renovation Movement.
Another question to annoy Téllez is when exactly did Ortega start to
turn from revolutionary into another Latin caudillo. This is difficult
to know, and probably does not have any importance, she replies crisply.
Chamorro also rushes past the question without answering. Long-time
critics of the Sandinistas say former colleagues such as Téllez and
Chamorro always misread Ortega, who has, since his guerrilla days, shown
an authoritarian streak combined with his obsession for secrecy and
conspiracies.
What Ortega has shown is that his motivation is power, says Chamorro. He
now has a very religious discourse. He thanks God that he is president.
He wants to present himself as someone who got another chance to run a
good government in peacetime and combat poverty. But his trajectory in
office has shown his fundamental objective is to maintain himself in power.
Many of those still who are loyal to Ortega but are unhappy with this
trajectory point to his wife, Rosario Murillo. She was an obscure
Sandinista official little seen during his first presidency but since
then her role within the party has expanded enormously. Today she is
essentially her husband s prime minister and acts as the day-to-day
administrator for a political strategist long known to have little
patience for the details of governing. Ortega now rarely appears in
public without her. Even among loyal Ortegistas one hears how Murillo, a
published poet with a fondness for large amounts of exotic jewellery, is
in fact a witch using her magic to lead their hero astray.
Rather than sorcery, more sober observers point to the 1998 accusation
made by her daughter from a previous marriage that Ortega had abused her
as a child. Murillo sided with husband against daughter, helping
insulate him from the charges. Many wonder about the leverage this gives
her with him. What is undoubtedly true is that since then, Ortega s
stepson Rafael has become increasingly visible in the president s inner
circle and is identified as the man in charge of the family s business
interests.
In other Latin American republics there is no dynastic tradition. But
here there is. Somoza organised a dynastic succession, notes María López
Vigil, editor-in-chief of Envio, a political monthly published by the
University of Central America. Already Rafael is increasingly prominent.
Many of Ortega s and Murillo s children are now to be found in positions
of political or economic power.
BUT BEFORE ANY possible handover to the next generation, Ortega plans to
run for another term in November s presidential elections. The
constitution explicitly forbids both immediate re-election and anyone
running for a third term in their lifetime, two provisions expressly
designed to curtail the country s would be caudillos and both of which
Ortega falls foul of.
But in 2009, a Supreme Court stacked with loyalists, as a result of
Ortega s pact with the Liberal leader Alemán, simply invalidated these
constitutional breaks. It ruled they infringed Ortega s human rights in
a decision local jurists said went against all legal precedent and logic.
Overseeing the November ballot will be the same Supreme Electoral
Council that rubberstamped the fraud of 2008. At its head is Ortega ally
Roberto Rivas. He is threatening to exclude foreign observers from the
poll, saying they are unneeded in a democracy such as Nicaragua.
The opposition is trying to rally around a single anti-Ortega candidate,
but so far without success. Free from the threat of prison thanks to his
pact with Ortega, Alemán is planning to run again. Most political
observers now consider him little more than a spoiler candidate, willing
to split the opposition vote at the bidding of his ally Ortega. In
Nicaragua you can get a lot of spoils by agreeing to come second.
Even if the opposition does find a candidate that could beat Ortega,
there is no guarantee that he would accept the result. The fraud of 2008
stands as a stark warning. It is not clear that the Sandinistas will
win. But the people think they will rob the election because they have
already done this, says Envio s María López. This is a small country and
everyone knows what everyone else is saying. You cannot hide anything
and the Sandinistas are telling their supporters we will win or we will
steal the election . They are out there saying this publically already.
Civic groups such as Transparency and Ethics and opposition parties are
mobilising to try and preserve the integrity of November s vote. But
they want help from abroad. The first thing we want from the
international community is a clear position on the illegal candidacy of
Daniel Ortega. It is totally outside of the law and I believe the
international community must immediately react against this, says
dissident Sandinista Téllez.
But there is a cruel irony working against such hopes. In the 1980s,
when Ortega was the legitimately elected leader of a popular revolution,
Nicaragua drew down on itself the wrath of the world s most powerful
nation and became one of the last battlegrounds of the Cold War. But a
dictatorial Ortega who has cut his deal with capitalism seems of far
less concern to Washington than the popularly elected but socialist
version it fought against in the 1980s.
His imminent power grab threatens to end his country s three-decade long
experiment with genuine democracy and yet so far has drawn a muted
reaction from a distracted international community.
After its inflated importance in the 1980s, Nicaragua now barely
registers on the diplomatic radar exactly at a moment which Téllez
describes as critical in the country s history. In Nicaragua, every time
you close the door on a civic resolution to political conflict, the door
that opens leads to war. This is a reality.
It is a startling warning from a guerrilla leader-turned-historian of
her country s troubled past.
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