editorial at/@
tortillaconsal punto/dot com
By Karla Jacobs, December 3rd 2009
It was hard not to feel impacted by the asymmetry between the current situations in Nicaragua and Honduras on Sunday 29th November as I accompanied my niece to the Children's Fair in La Plaza San Juan Pablo II in Managua.
For the first time in her life this twelve year old girl from a severely impoverished farming family was able to attend a circus, skate on an ice rink and have a go on a fairground ride as part of the Feria de los Niños Felices organized and paid for by the FSLN government in an attempt to ensure a happily memorable Christmas season for Nicaragua's children.
We even got to have a go on a bosun's chair belonging to the Civil Defence and have a look inside a Nicaraguan Air Force plane, a Navy speedboat, and an antique fire engine from the 1950s.
My niece was one of the more than 100,000 children to attend the fair during its first three days. The government expects over 1.5 million children to attend the fair during the 37 days it is open.
Security in the plaza is guaranteed by a hefty presence of Nicaragua's National Police, a force internationally recognized for its professionalism and people-friendly ethic since its foundation during the first stage of the Sandinista Revolution in the 1980s. Meanwhile the rides and other attractions are staffed by volunteers from the Sandinista youth organization "19 de Julio."
The government has been criticized by opposition parties for spending tens of thousands of dollars on this fair which they claim could have been better invested in the country's education and health systems. These criticisms are hard to swallow though, given the pitiful state in which the opposition left the country's public services after 16 years of uninterrupted rule.
And to be honest, I would have to agree with government spokesperson Rosario Murillo's answer to detractors that "a child's smile is priceless," especially given that we are talking about children who have suffered as much general hardship as the majority of Nicaragua's children have.
But while my niece was being helped on and off rides by young Sandinista volunteers and shown around Armed Force vehicles by friendly Nicaraguan soldiers, my mind kept returning to events in Honduras where the coup regime's farcical elections were taking place.
In a statement issued on the evening of November 29th the heroic National Resistance Front Against the Coup declared the "defeat" of the "electoral farce carried out by the dictatorship" thanks to "the highest level of abstention in the country's history."
According to the Resistance, which monitored the turnout at polling stations nationwide, at least 65% to 70% of registered Honduran voters abstained. The majority did so in support of the organization's call to boycott the anomalous electoral process.
The unprecedented attendance of the Assembly organized by the Resistance which took place in Tegucigalpa on November 30th to celebrate the "people's victory" against the coup regime served to further consolidate the fact that the majority of Honduran people, by not voting, expressed their approval of the Resistance anti coup stance.
This observation is particularly relevant given the unceasing violent repression (the beatings, the torture, the rapes, the murders) to which anti coup demonstrators have been subjected by the Honduran police and army since President Manuel Zelaya was kidnapped from his home and exiled to Costa Rica in the early hours of June 28th.
Indeed on the day of the "elections" peaceful anti coup marches in different parts of Honduras were brutally repressed by security forces leaving dozens of people wounded and illegally detained.
According to the government of this year's Nobel Peace Prize winner, though, the electoral process constitutes a positive step towards a solution to the Honduran crisis. In a statement issued on November 30th US State Department spokesperson Ian Kelly "congratulated the Honduran people for the peaceful exercise of their democratic right to elect their governors" and confirmed that the US plans to "work closely with the government of Porfirio Lobo."
And all the while the US is actively working to undermine the FSLN government in Nicaragua, a government which not only implements an unblemished policy of zero repression against its people, but that has actually made unprecedented progress in areas critical to the well-being of its people like literacy and food security.
At just a couple of hundred kilometres distance Managua and Tegucigalpa are worlds apart. And going by the State Department's response to the developing political situation in both capitals, it is clear who's side the US government is on.