editorial at/@
tortillaconsal punto/dot com
by Karla Jacobs, March 31st 2010
It is strange that the center-left Spanish daily El Pais appears to have such a warped overview of Nicaraguan politics, something confirmed by recent coverage of events in the Central American nation and more specifically by the comparison in terms of the presentation and editing of an interview with Eduardo Montealegre, leader of the opposition party Vamos con Eduardo (MVE), at the end of March to an interview with Nicaraguan Foreign Minister, Samuel Santos, in February.
While the Montealegre interview is awarded a significant amount of emotive prose to effectively back up his unfounded assertions that "Ortega is trying to dismantle democracy from within," and "Ortega is not going to permit free and fair elections because he knows that if he does, he will lose," the Santos interview, apart from a brief and "neutral" introduction, is presented in a bare question and answer format.
Apart from El Pais' numerous factual inaccuracies regarding Nicaragua, including the assertion that Montealegre is the "main opposition leader," (a ridiculous hypothesis going on his inability to maintain a firm grip over even his own withering bench in the National Assembly) the newspapers' coverage is based on the factually unsupported assumption that President Daniel Ortega's government is a dangerously anti democratic and authoritarian regime verging on systematic Somoza style civil rights violations. Within this fictitious context, Montealegre and other right wing representatives are presented as sane opponents who should be supported in their quest to push Ortega out of the presidency.
El Pais is loath to look into or analyze the extremely significant advances in terms of ordinary people's standard of living in Nicaragua since the FSLN came to power in 2007 or to utter a single word about the main two connotations Montealegre's name throws up among ordinary people in Nicaragua. These are, firstly, the biggest fraud in Nicaraguan history (the Cenis scandal) which effectively bankcrupted the Nicaraguan State and in which Montealegre played a crucial role during his time as Finance Minister under former president Enrique Bolaños and, secondly, the repeated failure of both himself as a candidate and of his small political party in the country's last three electoral processes.
Like it's UK and US counterparts (the Guardian, the New York Times and the Washington Post), the supposedly left of center newspaper El Pais reflects an undeniable political leaning in favour of representatives of the extreme right in Nicaragua. Unlike in the case of its English language equivalents, however, El Pais' failure to get even basic information right regarding Nicaraguan politics is especially surprising given that the editors do not have the superficial but arguably significant excuse of not speaking the language (something one assumes must be a contributing factor in similarly inaccurate reports about Nicaragua by papers like the Guardian whose Latin American correspondent, Rory Carroll, is known in certain parts of Nicaragua to be less than suitably proficient in terms of spoken Spanish).
If El Pais bothered to read what leading Nicaraguan political analysts William Grigsby and Adolfo Pastran have to say about Montealegre, they might consider revising their editorial policy. Following the recent regional elections on Nicaragua's Caribbean Coast, in which the alliance including Montealegre's MVE won just 2 out 90 seats in the two regional councils, Grigsby and Pastran both commented on Montealegre's alliance's failure to up its game in terms of popular support.
A few days after the recent regional elections, which took place on March 7th, Grigsby concluded that Montealegre "is not cut out for regional, municipal or national elections ... this is his third consecutive [electoral] defeat." Pastran, meanwhile, explained the main reason behind the MVE's inability to win more seats in the regional elections (and Arnoldo Aleman's PLC's failure to maintain its percentage of the vote on the Caribbean Coast) saying that during the electoral campaign "both [the PLC and the MVE] spent their time attacking each other instead of taking a serious look at the problems faced by communities on the Caribbean Coast."
El Pais' approach to Nicaraguan politics is not just factually inaccurate, the editors appear to miss the point altogether. There are many factors that contribute to the FSLN's steady increase in popular support over the last three years but understanding the two most important factors - major progress in terms of the social and economic well-being of the impoverished majority since 2007 and a deeply divided right wing who have proven themselves incapable of proposing credible alternatives to the FSLN's program and thus alienated themselves even further from ordinary Nicaraguans - is crucial to serious analysis of the current Nicaraguan political situation.
The final results of the regional elections presented by the Supreme Electoral Council (CSE) show that the FSLN almost doubled its popular support in this part of the country where traditionally, the right wing liberal parties have been more popular. The main opposition party, the PLC, meanwhile suffered a significant loss in support in both the northern and the southern Caribbean regions losing the absolute control over the southern Caribbean regional council that they have enjoyed for over 20 years. The PLC's poor performance (and the FSLN's impressive performance) respond to the effect of the political reality outlined in the previous paragraph at a grassroots level.
Montealegre's role within this equation has not been an important one for over a year now (since he lost to Alexis Arguello (RIP) during the 2008 municipal elections, cried fraud and was then unable to muster up even the pretense of sufficient popular support to make his claims appear feasible. And since the Caribbean Coast elections, his importance within Nicaraguan political life has begun to decline with even greater speed mainly due to the resentment expressed by leaders of the PLC who blame Montealegre's alliance for splitting the right wing vote.
For many years now, the US government has done all it can to create a right wing political force independent of the controversial figure of former president Arnoldo Aleman (convicted of multi million dollar theft from the Nicaraguan state during his term in office (1996 - 2001)). This should not be taken as a sign that the US is in any way put out by widespread government corruption - this particular strategic decision was based on the US State Department's dislike of the independence and warped patriotism Aleman's influence brings to right wing politics in Nicaragua. The US much prefers the likes of Montealegre and Enrique Bolaños whose obedience makes US dominance of Nicaragua's economic and geo-political agenda much easier. Recognizing the strategic gains of a divided right wing, the FSLN has done its best to avoid Aleman's grip over the main right wing party, the PLC, from being stamped out. As a result, US backing of Aleman's former allies, now his enemies, is what gave rise to the return of the FSLN to government in 2007 and is what continues to prevent a successful union of the right wing factions today.
This is something which, by now, the US has begun to realize. And an attempt at a process by which US acceptance of Aleman's inevitable leadership of a future united alliance can appear justified is in play. But to a large extent, it looks as though the damage has already been done - the irreconciliable personal differences between the leaders of the different right wing factions is not proving easy to overcome. Reactions to the right wing alliance's misadventure in the recent Caribbean elections, including PLC Vice President Wilfredo Navarro's description of Montealegre as "a back stabber," is just the latest in a series of major setbacks on the road to right wing unity.
The main problem is that, while the potential collaborators of the proposed united electoral alliance to defeat Ortega in the 2011 elections say they want unity, it is clear that they want it only on their own terms. In order to have any chance of success at next year's presidential elections such an alliance would need to count on the participation of the PLC and the other right wing parties (mainly the MVE, the MRS and the ALN) as well as the support of the US and European funded "civil society" organizations and Nicaragua's reactionary Bishops Conference.
In the near future, the greatest obstacle in terms of the efforts towards right wing unity will be the election in the National Assembly of over 30 top government officials to the different State institutions, something no party or combination of parties can achieve without the FSLN's 38 votes given that a majority vote of 56 of the 92 deputies is required for this type of election.
The MVE / MRS / civil society / US Embassy position is that under no circumstances should the current Electoral Magistrates be re-elected given that these same forces claim they were responsible for carrying out major fraud in both the 2008 municipal and 2010 regional elections - claims which have never been backed up with documented evidence. The other reason these factions want to ensure a more favourable quota of power within the CSE is that they hope to undermine the Supreme Court's ruling from last September which cleared the road for Ortega to stand as a presidential candidate again in 2011.
The PLC, whose leaders recently uttered venomous criticism of the main "civil society" organizations promoting radical change in the CSE, has a less rigid position on this matter. It is by no means clear that, as yet, the PLC has good enough reason to give up the possibility of negotiating the election of all the 30+ top posts on its own with the FSLN and give way to pressure to include all the other opposition factions as part of their negotiation team. That would mean giving up significant quotas of power within key institutions. And Aleman has not had a positive experience with quotas of power being handed over to individuals and factions he cannot trust completely. By all accounts it looks as though Aleman is set on using his power as leader of the opposition party with by far the greatest levels of popular support to ensure that the proposed unified opposition alliance is created as and when he sees fit.
The importance of the upcoming elections of top posts should not be overlooked. They will constitute either a much needed success in terms of the strategy to resurrect the right wing opposition as a viable political force in Nicaragua or one more crushing political defeat dealt by the FSLN, which, by then, surely, will be safely on its way to electoral victory in 2011. The real question, should the latter of the two scenarios come to pass, is whether the US backed political forces will even opt for taking part in presidential elections they are bound to lose. Montealegre's and Aleman's new found friendships with the Honduran coup dictator Roberto Micheletti is a worrying sign that they have other plans in mind.