Fabrizio Casari/Altrenotize, in radio La Primerísima, September 6th 2018
http://www.radiolaprimerisima.com/blogs/2003/
The United Nations does not consider Nicaragua to be a “case” to debate and deliberate. Denying the activity of its diligent officials who prepared a report about the opposition’s base of lies and its false human rights organizations, the Security Council rejected the request made by the United States to discuss Nicaragua. It is a solemn defeat for the United States’ plans of interference and also represents a fundamental denial of the activity of some United Nations and Organization of American States officials that, instead of investigating the acts, developed political projects.
The diplomatic victory of the United Nations Security Council represents an objective obstacle for the coup leaders and for the United States’ strategy that aims to exercise international pressure in order to put president Ortega on the defense. The government, however, after welcoming the delegations of the different international institutions and receiving in return a process of investigation stained with preconceived hostility, decided to make itself unavailable to any type of special, hypocritical and partial observation, demanding the recognition of the Nicaraguan institutions and the respect of its national sovereignty, which are essential in international relations.
In the meantime in Managua, while the coup mongers from the right and the church demand with their words the reopening of the national dialogue, with notable simultaneity, the arrival of $1.5 million from USAID destined for the MRS coincided with the resurgence of incidents and acts of vandalism during a protest in Managua by the so-called Civic Alliance. If this ultimate provocation had to demonstrate that the political contest is still alive, it has failed. It only served to demonstrate how the link between the proclamations of the Civic Alliance and the delinquents that let loose in the streets is structural and not circumstantial.
The country is on the way to total normalcy. The government has initiated the only national dialogue possible, defined as a “pathway to reconciliation”: popular assemblies everywhere where religious representatives, if they would like to, can participate and contribute. At the same time, for security, they will carry out the assemblies between the population and the national police, while the Attorney General’s Office of the Republic will continue allocating property titles to families in need. There is total support for the initiative on behalf of the Evangelicals: their president, Miguel Ángel Casco, praised the “dialogue between the people” and said, “we should not have a dialogue with the destroyers and the coup members. The coup members say that they love Nicaragua, but they prefer to see that it is destroyed into a thousand pieces than be governed by the Sandinistas, given the sickly hatred that lives in their hearts.”
In the recent letter to President Ortega, the right called for a reopening of the dialogue with the church as the role of mediator, the liberation of detained delinquents (transformed for the occasion into political prisoners) and early elections. Exactly what they asked for in April, apart from the president’s abandonment of the country. As if, in the meantime, the coup has not been defeated, as if the majority of the coup leaders haven’t fled to the U.S. and Costa Rica, as if the supposed Alliance, of which no numbers, representation and references are known, was a believable partner.
The demands show that the dialogue is, for the opposition, an asset of propaganda used to acquire a political role with the purpose of moving foreign wallets. Understandably, the government has not responded. This shameless propaganda has nothing to do with the dialogue. On the other hand, for the dialogue to be carried out as it has been foreseen to, it would require the presence of at least three actors: the government, the opposition and the mediators who mediate the two poles. The government is there, it is evident. But can the other subjects represent their areas?
The opposition
Divided and without another identity besides anti-Sandinismo, the opposition doesn’t express a unitary and recognized political bloc. There are no parties that, by virtue of their legally-represented, social, and electoral establishment in the institutions, can sit at the table. The liberals are two parties at war with each other. The conservatives are reduced to ridiculous percentages. The parties that came to the elections in opposition to the Sandinista Front are accused by the coup members of having been involved with the Sandinistas. So, who is there to talk to?
The MRS is an organization of ultra-right coup mongers, led by exponents of the country's wealthy families (Cuadra, Chamorro, Belli, Cardenal, etc.). They were Sandinistas when the FSLN governed, stopped being Sandinistas when the FLSN ended up in the opposition, and today attempt to return the country to their oligarchic families. Their platform is only anti-Sandinista hatred and personal resentment. They enjoy support from the U.S. and Europe and are are among the largest collectors of money and relations. They are hidden owners of several NGOs, founded to obtain support and international money. But they represent a maximum of 2% of the electorate and, as a result, it is difficult to carve out a political role that the liberals themselves do not recognize.
Entrepreneurs
COSEP? It represents the businesses that produce 30% of the GDP. Seventy percent is produced by those who do not belong to COSEP: microbusinesses, cooperatives, small businesses and informal work. The impact of foreign businesses in the Free Trade Zones exceeds by far, in employment and investments, the value of COSEP. Although the management these past months has been disastrous, with a heavy political defeat, loss of image, and the spending of many millions of dollars having produced more than 3,000 layoffs, COSEP has just confirmed Aguerri as president and has promoted Healy to vice president. This confirms the coup line up until now, which puts entrepreneurs beyond the possible margin of any dialogue.
As for the options of the association, they have been undoubtedly affected by the pressures of the USA. For example, the Nica Act, which orders international organizations to block loans to Nicaragua, was passed by Congress and is waiting to be voted on in the Senate, and the pirate Magnitsky Act calls for sanctions, on the total whim of the U.S., against “the hypothetical corrupt”, which has already happened with the “terrorists” and the “human rights violators”, all of which, by coincidence, are opponents of Washington. These pressures have contributed to an abrupt change in direction for those who, with the government in reconciliation, had obtained advantages and to who, up until 10 days before the coup attempt, recognized extraordinary successes, taking care not to define it as a “dictatorship”.
Pero la dependencia secular de los EE.UU., la inclinación natural hacia el tamaño de colonizado desde el exterior y patron hacia el interior, la molestia conocida por el concepto de patria y soberanía nacional, ha reavivado el papel del COSEP en su versión histórica. Los llamados empresarios nicaragüenses siempre han sido solo terratenientes y burguesía compradora. Ellos no tienen ninguna idea de cómo desarrollar el país que no sea la entrega de su economía en manos del latifundio y de rodillas delante de Washington, ni idea de la modernización.
But the age-old dependence on the U.S., naturally tending towards playing a colonized role imposed from overseas while being the boss at home, as well as the familiar annoyance at ideas of patriotism and national sovereignty, has rekindled the role of COSEP in its historical version. The so-called Nicaraguan entrepreneurs have always been only landowners and bourgeoisie buyers. They have no idea how to develop the country, other than handing over their economy to the large estates and kneeling before Washington, nor do they know about the idea of modernization.
After all, they governed for 16 years in the country, and despite the cancelation of its debt and the massive economic aid from the U.S. and Europe, they led Nicaragua into an abyss: corruption at the highest level, plundering of public resources, lack of electricity, education and public health, infrastructure close to collapse, widespread insecurity and per capita income equal to that of Haiti, the poorest country in the entire American continent. Precisely because of this, the Nicaraguan people are careful to not stand behind them.
The church
As for the church, which now divides the religious leadership with the evangelical communities, its credibility is totally compromised, given its support to the coup. Only the Nuncio sent by Pope Francis could sit in a hypothetical dialogue. In fact, it is not possible to involve the Somoza-supporters, Báez, Álvarez or Mata in representation of the church. They were instigators of hate protected by diplomatic immunity. Some of their subordinates directly participated in paramilitary operations and others even participated in the torture of captive Sandinistas. The political, logistical, and media coverage that the ecclesiastical hierarchies have offered to the attempted coup precludes their role as mediators. They are not mediators -- they are an integral and active part of the coup strategy.
What dialogue are we talking about?
The opposition's request to open the national dialogue table again seems instrumental. President Ortega, since the electoral victory of 2006, had established a mode of government based on dialogue and cooperation between the different social forces (trade unions, private businesses, government), in view of the historical need an end to the dregs of the armed conflict and chronic underdevelopment of the country. And it actually happened that the government model reduced social conflict to a minimum, established the foundations of energy and food sovereignty (Nicaragua currently produces most of the energy and food that it consumes) and began the greater work of modernization of the country’s history that, to mention only one fact among many, places Nicaragua in sixth place among the 144 countries in the World Economic Forum’s Gender Gap Report in 2017.
Despite the intention of COSEP, the Right and the church, a conciliation board and mediation was also proposed by the government in the early days of the crisis, with the hope that stopping the clashes could be an issue desired by all. However, it was rejected, both by the coup in civilian clothes and by those who wore tunics. They were the leaders of M19, in the first meeting, who said they were willing to accept only the resignation and flight of the government, and it was the church that unilaterally suspended the dialogue against the will of the government. To propose again now that it has been lost, after having rejected it when it was expected to win, is not serious.
Dialogue is not a gateway to the media, but a decisive moment for coordinated politics; it has a systemic political value in itself and cannot become a propaganda bus which one can get on or off of voluntarily. Precisely that model of government, which had a decisive lever in the dialogue between the social interlocutors, was the first victim of the attempted coup. On the agenda now is tranquility, peace and recovery of the economy damaged by the coup- not the legitimacy of the coup with a media gateway in order to ask for more money in Washington and Miami.
Having necessary time to heal the wounds and clear the coup mongers’ hate from the air will establish the conditions for political meetings within the country. Nicaragua retakes the interrupted path for its development, but starting to walk again does not imply closing your eyes, and looking to the future does not mean forgetting the past. Reconciliation then, but not impunity: this is the way by which the idea of nation will challenge and defeat, as always in the past, the obsession of the United States for an impossible annexation.