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A look at recent mainstream media coverage of in Nicaragua
By Karla Jacobs, August 6th 2010
It is not surprising that readers of mainstream news media living outside Nicaragua are able to ascertain so little about the country's political reality given that those outlets provide next to no coverage of the opinions and arguments of the only political force that has actually been shown to represent a significant chunk of public opinion - the FSLN.
Similarly, few details are given about the connotations the political figures and movements that are covered in the corporate media have within Nicaragua making it nearly impossible to gauge the level of relevance and credibility the opinions presented would merit for a Nicaraguan audience.
Opinion polls confirm FSLN as largest political party by far
Two recent opinions polls, both of which were carried out in June 2010, give an idea of the level of support the different political parties and leaders have within the country. The first poll (different summaries of which can be found here and here) was carried out by M&R consultants whose political surveys have traditionally tended to favour the right wing political parties. The second poll was carried out by Siglo Nuevo consultants, a newly founded outfit, whose surveys tend to favour the FSLN government.
Measured in slightly different ways, both polls find that in terms of the general public's sympathies, the overall picture is one in which at least a third of the population does not identify itself with any party, between 33% and 45% express support for the governing FSLN, and the sympathies of the 17% - 25% of the population that expresses support for the right wing opposition is divided between a number of different parties:
M&R
poll:
which
party
do
you identify with?
| None |
42.3% |
| Sandinista Front (FSLN) |
32.6% |
| Constitutional
Liberal Party (PLC) |
14.8% |
| Eduardo
Montealegre's faction (MVE) |
7.8% |
| Sandinista
Renovation Movement (MRS) |
1.7% |
| Conservative Party (PC) |
0.5% |
Siglo Nuevo poll: If the elections were
today,
which party would you vote for?
| Undecided |
33.2% |
|
MRS |
1.5% |
| FSLN |
45.5% |
PC |
0.4% |
|
| PLC |
9.7% |
Other |
3.1% |
|
| MVE |
2.7% |
Didn't respond |
2.9% |
The measurements of public perception of government programs and of the opposition's political impact are equally revealing: the M&R poll found that 67.1% say the quality of the public education system has improved under the Ortega government, while 62.3% say the quality of care within the public health system has improved during the same period.
The same poll found that 81.1% think the work carried out by the opposition has a negative impact while only 13.6% believe it has a positive impact. Similarly the Siglo Nuevo poll found that only 15.3% approved of the work carried out by the deputies in the National Assembly where the right wing opposition have a majority.
Ignoring on the ground reality corporate media portrays popular discontent
Apparently oblivious to poll results like the ones mentioned above, the impression that has been created by the corporate media regarding political feeling in Nicaragua since the FSLN came to power in 2007, is one of increasing popular discontent and unrest provoked by what are described as the government's moves towards dictatorship.
This fictional storyline really began to take root within mainstream media coverage of Nicaragua after the opposition's completely unfounded claims of fraud following the municipal elections of November 2008.
The media furore surrounding the opposition's bogus claims lasted for several months, long enough to instil the false belief that Nicaragua is run by an anti-democratic government in the minds of mainstream media consumers around the world.
Subsequently, Nicaragua has pretty much dropped off the international corporate media's radar except for a handful of ill-intentioned opinion pieces and the occasional factually evasive, contextually bare article to top up the already established consensus that Daniel Ortega may not yet be a dictator, but he is working toward that end.
The main two events that have been picked up on and manipulated in the international press during 2010 have been the two days of disturbances related to the ongoing political power struggle in April, and the recent replacement of a number of opposition and Sandinista mayors and councillors.
Reuters' misleading account of ongoing political power struggle
A Reuters article dated April 30th with the headline "Tensions mount in Nicaragua over Ortega re-election" is a classic example of the way the corporate media portrays political events in Nicaragua exclusively within the boundaries of the right wing opposition's distorted logic.
Unlike Reuters' affirmation that the brief disturbances on the streets of Managua at the end of April were FSLN led "protests against opposition efforts to block leftist [Ortega]'s re-election next year," actually what Sandinista sympathizers were protesting about was the opposition deputies' refusal to session in the National Assembly or to negotiate with the FSLN about the key election of 25 top posts within government institutions.
Between them the opposition parties make up a majority in the Nicaraguan legislative. As a result of their inability to work together on a common political project, however, the right wing has had to resort consistently to boycotting work in the legislative altogether as part of what appears to be the logic that if-we-can't-get-our-way-then-we-won't-let-you-get-yours-either.
These periodical boycotts of legislative work have been temporarily successful in preventing the FSLN implementing its programme of government. For example, the opposition deputies refused to approve the 2008 National Budget until the second trimester of the year creating a precarious situation for many public institutions in terms of being able to fulfil their legally established obligations to the population.
So, although it was near on impossible to decipher from the article itself, the main cause of the protests mentioned by Reuters was the opposition's cynical and ongoing strategy to boycott their legislative duties and sabotage the FSLN's attempts to negotiate the pending election, in the National Assembly, of 25 top posts within the Supreme Court of Justice, the Supreme Electoral Council, the Comptroller General's Office and a number of other State institutions in which the current officials' terms have already expired or are due to expire over the coming months.
The opposition has two good reasons not to take part in those negotiations; firstly because the different opposition parties and factions get on with each other so badly that they have been unable to devise and stick to a joint strategy that would allow them to make the most of their majority in the legislation and reduce to a minimum the quotas of power rendered to the FSLN.
Secondly, the longer those tops posts remain unfilled, the longer officials whose original terms have now expired are obliged to stay on in their positions and the easier it becomes for the opposition to argue a degree of illegitimacy within governmental institutions.
Indeed if they can get away with it, the opposition may well put off the election of the 25 top posts until after the presidential elections of 2011. That way they would oblige officials whose terms will have expired more than a year previously to oversee the national elections thus creating a situation in which they can undermine the credibility of an election process they look set to lose.
Precisely because all that context was missing, Reuters felt justified quoting the leader of one of the main two opposition factions which have refused to negotiate the election of the top posts, Eduardo Montealegre's comment: "[the political parties] have to talk for the good of the country."
El País' factual errors demonstrate ignorance of relevant Nicaraguan legislation
Like the above mentioned Reuters article, a recent article in, supposedly left of centre, Spanish daily El País titled "Daniel Ortega wants all the power" chooses, not only to frame its narrative strictly within the limits of the opposition's irrational perspective, but also to consult only opposition representatives and sympathizers.
According to this article, which is about the replacement of a number of local government officials between May and July this year, "the President of Nicaragua crushed municipal autonomy with the removal of five mayors," an argument which, like the cries of fraud in November 2008, is based solely on opposition claims of what happened.
El País goes on to contradict the impression the article initially creates - that it was Ortega who removed the mayors in question - by explaining, accurately, that the local government officials were replaced following majority votes in their respective local councils to that effect.
The newspaper then goes on to describe the replacement of the local officials as "irregular" without referring to the Nicaraguan Municipal Law, article 28 of which states that the Municipal Council has the faculty to "remove the Mayor, Vice Mayor or Councillors and incorporate replacements should any of the situations outlined in Articles 23 and 24 arise."
The situations outlined in Articles 23 and 24 include the situations cited by the municipal councils prior to the resolutions ordering the different municipal government officials' replacement - nepotism, the existence of Comptroller General resolutions indicating those official's involvement in acts of corruption and repeated failure to obey Municipal Council resolutions, for example.
El País also failed to mention, or is unaware of, the fact that the Nicaraguan Institute of Municipal Promotion (INIFOM) recently oversaw a series of training workshops for local councillors as part of an attempt to raise awareness about the functions and responsibilities of the members of the maximum authority within Nicaraguan local governments - the municipal councils.
According to the President of INIFOM, Edward Centeno, who gave an interview to a local TV channel at the end of June, the recent replacement of different local government officials is a natural consequence of those training workshops.
Wikipedia's factually erroneous account of recent Nicaraguan political history
Shoddy reporting on Nicaragua is not limited to the corporate media. Information media like Wikipedia also engage in the divulgation of false accounts of specific episodes while omitting altogether other crucial developments.
In the section "Nicaragua desde 1990" on the Spanish language Wikipedia page about Nicaragua the following statement is made: "In November 2008 municipal elections were carried out ... without international observers."
In actual fact over 150 international observers, representatives of the Central American and Caribbean Tikal Protocol, the South American Quito Protocol and the Latin American Council of Electoral Experts (CEELA), monitored the electoral process.
Meanwhile, the section completely ignores the important benefits of Nicaragua's membership of ALBA and numerous other significant economic and social advances of far deeper significance for the country than the crisis fabricated by the opposition following the municipal elections of 2008.
It is clear from the flagrant error and omissions mentioned above that the Wikipedia information is edited from a centre-right political slant and sourced from the mainstream media.
Media bases coverage on views of politicians who represent 20% of popular opinion
The main weakness of the sort of journalistic and editing practises engaged in by these information and news media outlets when reporting Nicaraguan politics is the tendency to back up sloppy arguments by quoting representatives of political parties and factions that have been shown over and again to enjoy a pitiful level of support among the Nicaraguan population while omitting altogether relevant opinions from the FSLN, the most representative political party in the country.
By far the most frequently quoted Nicaraguan politician in the international mainstream media is leader of the "Vamos con Eduardo" faction (MVE), Eduardo Montealegre. Another popular choice is President of the Sandinista Renovation Movement (MRS), Edmundo Jarquín, who's comments are usually used, deceptively, to try to persuade liberal thinkers that the MRS represents a left wing alternative in Nicaragua.
Edmundo Jarquin himself married into the wealthy and influential Chamorro family. Politically centre-right, the Chamorro family dominate printed news media in Nicaragua, making their views and opinions a vital component of the disinformation feedback loop that sustains the international media campaign against the FSLN government.
By contrast, leader of the Constitutional Liberal Party (PLC), disgraced former president of the Republic, Arnoldo Alemán, still under indictment for his role in multi-million corruption scandals, is seldom quoted. That may be due to his very public fall from grace seven years ago. But other representatives of his party are indeed given a certain amount of importance by the international media.
To understand what ideas and practises these people and political parties (which together represent roughly 20% of popular opinion) really stand for, corporate media consumers need to delve into Nicaragua's recent political history and then ask themselves if it is justifiable to assume, as the mainstream media does, that the right wing opposition is actually interested in democracy and honest public administration.
Montealegre: multi-millionaire banker indicted for corruption
If one takes the time to investigate Eduardo Montealegre's past, it rapidly becomes clear why the corporate media's main source for comment on national political events, has failed so decidedly to attract more than, at most, 7.8% support for the political faction he leads.
Montealegre, nicknamed "the mouse" in reference to his small stature and lack of leadership charisma, is a multi millionaire banker and a far right politician who has a case pending against him in the Nicaraguan courts for multi-million dollar fraud against the State resulting from his participation in the financial operation referred to as the CENIs scandal.
The CENIs scandal, which is generally considered the biggest fraud in the nation's history, resulted in the effective bankruptcy of the Nicaraguan State between 1999 and 2004 when, as a result of former neoliberal governments' shamelessly illicit financial management of the State's patrimony, the Central Bank incurred short term loan obligations equivalent to 95% of the country's available international reserves.
Montealegre played a key role in the third stage of the CENIs financial operation when, during his time as Finance Minister under former president Enrique Bolaños, he oversaw what Nicaragua's Comptroller-General's office has condemned as a rigged auction of State properties and goods for approximately 10% of their estimated value, according to the Public Prosecutor's Office investigation into the scandal.
As Finance Minister, Montealegre was also responsible for the re-engineering of the CENIs debt in 2003, a financial agreement which the Public Prosecutor alleges to have disproportionately benefited the private bank Bancentro of which Montealegre was a major share holder and Director at the time.
Together the rigged auction and suspicious re-engineering of the CENIs debt incurred US$100 million losses to the State (roughly 10% of Nicaragua's annual budget at that time), according to the Public Prosecutor's Office investigation. (See this article for further details about the CENIs scandal.)
Alemán's PLC: epitome of corruption and mismanagement
Similarly, Arnoldo Alemán's PLC is strongly associated with corruption and public sector mismanagement in the minds of ordinary Nicaraguans. Indeed Eduardo Montealegre is just one of 39 former public officials from the two previous administrations (led by former presidents Alemán and Bolaños) who have been accused by the Public Prosecutor's Office of mismanagement of public funds, embezzlement, fraud and other crimes as part of the CENIs scandal.
The list of accused includes a whole swathe of top public officials from the Alemán and Bolaños administrations, including two former presidents of the Central Bank, two former finance ministers, and two former presidents of the Bank Superintendent's office, whom one can only assume were placed in those positions precisely to help aid the bankruptcy of Nicaragua in the name of the personal and commercial benefit of a small group of local oligarchs and right wing politicians.
Alemán himself, convicted of the theft of millions of dollars of public funds in 2003, was named the 9th most corrupt leader in recent world history by the international non profit organization, Transparency International, in 2004.
In other words, the PLC and other political factions further to the right represented by figures like Montealegre are synonymous with corruption and anti democratic practises in Nicaragua. They do not represent, as corporate media coverage suggests, a democratic alternative for good government.
Mundo Jarquín: Development bank bureaucrat allied with the far right
The MRS and its leader, Edmundo Jarquín, are often portrayed as a morally superior left wing alternative to the FSLN in Nicaragua. In practice, though, Jarquín and his colleagues have allied themselves closely with far right forces in the National Assembly - taking part in the above mentioned legislative boycotts, going on the campaign trail with Montealegre in 2008 and even "borrowing" two MVE deputies in order to maintain the party's status as a legislative bloc. That record renders completely implausible their claim to represent a left of centre position.
In the latest of a series of efforts to minimize a number of MRS members' revolutionary origins, Jarquín announced last month that the party would not celebrate the 31st anniversary of the Popular Sandinista Revolution:
"83% of the Nicaraguan population was 14 or younger in 1979," explained Jarquín, "so, whether we like it or not, ... neither the merits of the fight against Somoza, nor the merits or demerits of somocismo are very significant ... for the immense majority of Nicaraguans."
The MRS' position regarding the latest anniversary of the Revolution is a clear indicator that Jarquín and his colleagues have little interest in promoting the collective memory of the barbarity of the Somoza dictatorship given that such an exercise would decidedly undermine the political movement's propaganda claim that Nicaraguans are living under a dictatorship today.
In it's anxiety to bolster this bogus claim the MRS has even linked itself to the most extreme promoters of the hate campaign against Ortega who appear to advocate assassination attempts against the President. "Ortega and Somoza are the same thing" is the slogan on a political poster depicting an image of Ortega and Somoza splattered in blood and "signed" Rigoberto (the name of Somoza's assassin). This poster is linked to under "afiches políticos" (political posters) on the MRS website.
Given that the MRS has, at most, 1.7% support among the population, the amount of coverage awarded to former Inter American Development Bank bureaucrat, Edmundo Jarquín, in the two national newspapers, El Nuevo Diario and La Prensa, can only be accounted for by the fact that those same two newspapers are owned by the media barons of the Chamorro family into which he married (former president Violeta Barrios de Chamorro is Edmundo Jarquín's mother-in-law).
Crisis in the Nicaraguan right
Last month the latest in a series of attempts to unite the different right wing factions fell through, provoking the express annoyance and disappointment of certain representatives of the Catholic Church hierarchy, "civil society" and big business who have been pushing for the creation of one big opposition alliance to compete against the FSLN in next year's presidential elections.
This latest failure to consolidate a unified alliance, like the recent devastating poll results, is indicative of the ongoing crisis suffered by the Nicaraguan right - a crisis which began during the Bolaños administration when US and European diplomats encouraged the new president to carve out his own political space and dump Alemán in what appeared to be an attempt to sweep the extent of the corruption engaged in by their Nicaraguan allies under the carpet by turning Alemán into a scapegoat for the fraudulent practise and mismanagement that had become generalized within government institutions.
With time it became clear, however, that Bolaños and his foreign advisers had underestimated Alemán's clout as leader of the PLC. Even during his brief period in jail and the months he spent under house arrest, Alemán never lost his grip over the majority of key players within the PLC. Meanwhile, the group that supported Bolaños in his quest to smear Alemán, which included Montealegre, were forced to create their own political factions separate from the PLC.
The resulting division of the right wing, which is as marked today as it ever was, was founded on, and is upheld by, profound mutual mistrust between Alemán and those that perpetuated his dethroning as undisputed leader of the Nicaraguan right.
The ongoing crisis within the right has created a situation in which the right wing, in opposition for the first time since 1990, is too busy constructing and de-constructing political alliances to come up with a viable policy alternatives.
On top of this, poll results since the FSLN came to power in 2007 show that the right wing's voting base has not only remained divided but has actually begun an increasingly devastating process of evaporation: while the FSLN voting base appears to have at least remained solid and probably grown since 2007, the percentage of the population who say they do not identify with any political party has escalated. This trend almost certainly corresponds to disillusioned traditional right wing voters and the sons and daughters of families who have traditionally voted for the right.
Mainstream media's stance corresponds to a wider geopolitical strategy
Apparently the mainstream media does not consider any of this background and context relevant when deciding who should be projected as advocates for popular will and democracy in Nicaragua. If it weren't for the sinister undertones of that decision, it would be laughable that the corporate press have elected representatives of the PLC, MVE and MRS as spokespeople for democracy.
It is reasonable to assume, however, that the mainstream information and news media's fallacious portrayal of political events in Nicaragua corresponds to the wider geopolitical strategy of the Western imperialist governments who appear intent on stamping out the newest forms of social and political revolution in Latin America.
The corporate media's role is to make the implementation of that strategy appear consistent with the norms of Western moral code. In other words, to make out that the end goals of that strategy are "democracy and freedom" for the Nicaraguan people.