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Recent
news on
important developments in Nicaragua
By Karla Jacobs, 6th August 2009
By Karla Jacobs, 6th August 2009
Given that our coverage has been almost entirely dedicated to the ongoing crisis in Honduras since the coup d'etat against President Manuel Zelaya at the end of June, we thought it necessary to provide readers with a brief summary of important recent Nicaraguan news items. The following news items are covered in this report:
- Internal
reactions to the Honduran crisis
- US concedes property waiver
- Government to present tax reform proposal
- Nicaragua declared free of illiteracy
- Agriculture Minister: 2009 harvest likely to supersede expectations
Internal reactions to the Honduran crisis
The most active and outspoken member of the Nicaraguan opposition on the subject of the Honduran crisis has been the US Embassy's repeatedly-failed candidate Eduardo Montealegre. Montealegre became the first and only political figure outside Honduras to actually travel to that country to meet with coup president Roberto Micheletti. During his two day trip to Tegucigalpa last week Montealegre stated that what had occurred in Honduras was not a coup but a "constitutional succession" provoked by "irregularities" committed by Manuel Zelaya.
Montealegre even went as far as calling on the "liberal parties of Latin America to view the situation in Honduras from a broader perspective. This is not a struggle between left and right but between dictatorship and democracy." His words should be taken to represent what his patrons at the State Department really think about the coup but can't get away with saying in public.
Similar statements have been made by other Nicaraguan right wing politicians. When asked for his opinion on the Honduran crisis Eliseo Núnez, a key member of Montealegre's mini political movement, went as far as saying "there was no coup in Honduras. Here we need to throw out Daniel Ortega anyway we can. What I would like is to see Daniel Ortega disappear."
Right wing forces and the corporate media have been extremely critical of the government's decision to allow Manuel Zelaya and a varying number of Hondurans (who fled the military repression) to stay and carry out meetings in the northern town of Ocotal. According to these forces, which have demanded that Zelaya be expelled, the presence of the Hondurans on the Nicaraguan side of the border is a threat to Nicaragua's security.
Spooked by the insistence by right wing figures such as the PLC's Wilfredo Navarro that an imminent threat of conflict in the Ocotal region existed, the independent left wing Radio La Primerísima published an article warning of a possible plan to provoke out and out conflict between the two countries arranging for paramilitaries dressed as Nicaraguan soldiers to shoot at Honduran soldiers on the border.
On July 31st, during his speech as part of the 30th anniversary celebrations of the founding of the Nicaraguan Air Force, President Daniel Ortega mentioned the possibility of the existence of such a plan saying "Nicaragua does not want war with anybody. I insist, Nicaragua does not want war."
Ortega went on to call on the Honduran military to "rectify it's very grave mistake" saying that, in the event of a political agreement to bring the crisis to an end, the ones who are likely to pay the price for the crimes committed are not the political leaders who provoked the coup but the military officials who carried it out.
Official visit from high level Russian delegation
On July 28th Daniel Ortega and Government Spokesperson Rosario Murillo welcomed a high level Russian delegation led by Vice Prime Minister Igor Sechin on official visit to Nicaragua. During the event Sechin gave Ortega two letters, one from Russian President Dmitriv Medvedev and the other from Russian Primer Minister Vladimir Putin. Both letters expressed the Russian government's full disposition to strengthen and broaden cooperation with Nicaragua in all fields.
As well as Vice Prime Minister Sechin, the Russian delegation included many other important officials such as the Energy Minister, the Foreign Minister, the Director of Military Cooperation and the Vice Minister of Trade and Commerce.
Among other things Ortega requested assistance from the Russian government to "modernize" Nicaragua's armed forces. This is necessary, he said, not in order to project Nicaragua as a threat to any other nation, but in order to be able to effectively carry out the fight against international drug trafficking and organized crime. Ortega has made similar requests to the US government which have been rejected.
During the Russian delegation's visit a number of bilateral treaties were signed in the areas of industrial fishing, migration and petroleum. As part of the agreements, Russia will provide support to increase Nicaragua's industrial fishing capacity, Nicaraguans and Russians will be able to visit each other's countries without the need to obtain a visa prior to arrival, and Russian petroleum companies will carry out joint exploration studies with Nicaragua's state oil company Petronic in Nicaragua's Pacific and Caribbean waters.
US concedes property waiver
On July 31st the US State Department informed the Nicaraguan Foreign Minister Samuel Santos of the decision to grant Nicaragua what is known as the property "waiver" for another year. This means that US aid will continue to Nicaragua and the US won't boycott financial assistance to Nicaragua from international financial institutions for the next twelve months.
According to US legislation aid should be suspended to any country that at some point implemented a policy of confiscating property from US citizens, or from people who later became US citizens. This applies to Nicaragua given that, although the 1980s land reform affected very few US citizens, a large number of former National Guard members and other Nicaraguan oligarchs who abandoned the country and later had property confiscated as part of the land reform, later became US citizens.
In order to be awarded a one year "waiver" or exemption from the relevant US sanctions, the Nicaraguan government must be seen to make "significant" progress in providing compensation to those US (formerly Nicaraguan) citizens who had land confiscated in the 80s.
Between July 2008 and July 2009 Nicaragua resolved 48 compensation claim cases for 32 US citizens. Despite this apparently "significant" progress, US Ambassador Robert Callahan had recently suggested that the "waiver" would not be granted to Nicaragua this year.
Government to present tax reform proposal
Treasury Minister, Alberto Guevara, and President of the Central Bank, Antenor Rosales, announced plans to present the government's tax reform proposal as soon as the current round of negotiations with International Monetary Fund (IMF) come to an end.
The latest round of talks with an IMF technical delegation began in Managua on August 3rd. Topics on the agenda include the tax reform proposal, mechanisms to strengthen the Nicaraguan Social Security Institute, and economic projections for 2010.
The talks follow a period of dispute between the two parts provoked by the IMF's attempt to impose certain financial reforms the Nicaraguan government considered damaging. In the end Nicaragua was able to impose its will and did not implement the reforms proposed by the IMF.
The subject of the long overdue tax reform in Nicaragua is a matter the de facto economic powers operating in Nicaragua have tried to keep off the agenda as long as possible. Big business, both Nicaraguan and international, enjoy a completely unjustifiable array of tax benefits and exemptions within the country while the impoverished majority make up for taxes the rich are allowed to evade paying high levels of consumption tax on all food and other basic products.
Rosales said the reform proposal aims to "improve the tax system, making it fairer and more effective in terms of fomenting the national productive capacity." Left of centre critics of the government are sceptical about the possibility that big business will be significantly affected by the government's tax reform proposal given that, until now, the government has avoided stepping on COSEP's toes.
COSEP, the main private sector organization, proved itself an important ally for the government recently when, as part of the previously mentioned dispute, big business representatives travelled to Washington with the government delegation to convince the IMF to back off.
No matter how soft the government decides to be on big business, though, an inevitably intense or even explosive process of consultations and amendments involving mainly the private sector, producers and workers, is almost certain to take place after the presentation of the government tax reform proposal. A final version of the proposal should be included in the executive's 2010 Budget proposal which will be sent to the National Assembly no later than October 15th.
Nicaragua declared free of illiteracy
On July 19th, as part of the celebrations of the 30th anniversary of the triumph of the Popular Sandinista Revolution, Nicaragua became the fourth country in Latin America to be declared free of illiteracy. (The other three countries to have been declared free of illiteracy are Cuba, Venezuela and Bolivia).
In June a delegation from UNESCO (the UN Education, Science and Culture Organization) visited Nicaragua and was able to confirm that indeed the percentage of the Nicaraguan population unable to read and write has dropped to below 5% for the first time in the nation's history. The exact percentage of illiteracy among the population was determined as 4.1% after an extensive study involving samples of the population from each of Nicaragua's 153 municipalities.
The first stage of the National Literacy Campaign called "de Martí a Fidel" was made possible thanks to Cuban and Venezuelan cooperation in terms of technical, logistical and financial support. The teaching method used during the campaign is the Cuban "Yo Sí Puedo" method.
The vast majority of teachers and educators who worked on the literacy campaign are young Nicaraguans, often accompanied and supported by teams of Venezuelan and Cuban teachers.
On July 31st the second stage of the National Literacy Campaign called "Sandino Vive ... la lucha sigue" began. This phase aims to reduce the illiteracy rate to 3% by 8th November 2009, the commemoration of Carlos Fonseca's death in combat. The Ministry of Education has identified the areas worst affected by the scourge of illiteracy are Jinotega and the Atlantic Autonomous Regions (RAAN and RAAS). Efforts are therefore now being focussed on these specific areas of the country.
Simultaneously, 300,000 of the over 500,000 adults (between the ages of 15 and 65) who learnt to read and write as part of the first stage ("de Martí a Fidel") of the campaign, are now enrolled in a program called "Yo, Sí Puedo Seguir," which is a special accelerated primary education course for adults.
Agriculture Minister: 2009 harvest likely to supersede expectations
Minister of Agriculture, Ariel Bucardo, is confident that this year's harvest of basic grains and other important crops like coffee and sugar will supersede official projections. The government had projected a slight increase on production compared to 2008. Bucardo is now confident that aim will easily be met. So far this year climatic conditions have been favourable in most of the country resulting in a low proportion of crops being lost to lack or excess of rain.
The government's policy of providing high quality certified seed and fertilizer to small and medium farmers and agricultural cooperatives at accessible prices or as a loan with favourable payback conditions has meant a larger percentage of arable land is being used, and farmers are achieving significantly higher yields.
The FSLN government's agricultural policy forms part of its overall food security and food sovereignty policy which has been praised by the FAO (UN Food and Agricultural Organization) on a number of occasions. According to recently published FAO figures the government's food policy has resulted in an almost 30 point drop in the percentage of the Nicaraguan population suffering from malnourishment.