MESOAMERICA

VOLUME 26, NUMBER 10, OCTOBER 2007

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NICARAGUA

“UN” Welcome Speech

Investors, opposition party members, foreign residents and the entire business class of Nicaragua were left shaking their heads after President Daniel Ortega’s fiery speech to the 62^nd General Assembly of the United Nations on 25 Sep, in which he blasted the US and much of the developed world for its global imperialist and capitalist project.

In his first address to the UN in 18 years, Ortega railed the US as the “biggest and most impressive dictatorship that has existed in the long history of humanity,” and said that US President George W. Bush was no better than former President

Ronald Reagan, who declared a covert war on Nicaragua in the ’80s.

He said the Bush government’s war on terrorism has led to the “same circumstances of oppression, of violence, of terror, that today threaten humanity more than 18 years ago.”

Critics, however, claim its Ortega that has not changed. “This is Ortega’s same repetitive and tired diatribe [from the 1980s],” said Emilio Alvarez, political analyst and former Minister of Foreign Relations.

Many Nicaraguans—even those who may agree with Ortega’s geopolitical analysis of current events—think that Ortega missed a golden opportunity to put politics aside and win international sympathy by thanking the world for its outpouring of solidarity in the wake of Hurricane Felix, and asking for more assistance to help rebuild the country’s devastated North Atlantic Autonomous Region (RAAN).

Hurricane Felix tore through Nicaragua as a category 5 storm on 4 Sep, killing some 300 people, leveling entire swaths of forest, destroying 80% of the regions infrastructure, and resulting in an estimated $850 million in damage.

Ortega, who had promised regional leaders of the RAAN that he would address the region’s plight and appeal for help, only made a cursory mention of the victims in a long list of other “victims of colonialism and neocolonialism,” including victims of the holocaust, victims of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and victims of South African Apartheid.

Most Nicaraguans who have strong family or economic ties to the US seemed to wince at Ortega’s diatribe. So, too, did leaders of the country’s struggling tourism sector.

“This speech is making news in the US just when people there are starting to plan their vacations for the coming high-season,” said Lucy Valenti, president of the private National Tourism Chamber (CANATUR). “This will create the immediate impression that Nicaragua is not a friendly country for Americans.”

Realtors, who are already reporting a 20-50% decrease in property sales from last year, said Ortega’s antics only serve to reinforce the fears of many US investors and potential buyers.

But what has most worried people about Ortega is his overtures toward Iran. “Most observers believe the relationship is more symbolic than anything else, will probably not amount to very much, and will not pose a serious strategic threat to the US,” said Michael Shifter, vice-president for policy at the Washington, DC, think tank Inter-American Dialogue. “But it is safe to assume that the relationship will be watched very closely in Washington, not only by the Bush administration but by the Democratic majority in Congress.”

Anti-therapeutic Abortion Law Challenged

Human rights activists are throwing their hands up in the air following the National Assembly’s recent decision to re-penalize therapeutic abortion in the new penal code, thereby exhausting hope that lawmakers would undo their election-year decision to outlaw abortion to win the favor of the Roman Catholic Church.

The decision to re-penalize therapeutic abortion ratifies Nicaragua’s lonely position as one of five countries in the world to outlaw medical procedures to save a pregnant woman’s life. Human Rights Watch this week reported that Nicaragua’s original decision to outlaw abortion last Nov has resulted in more than 80 maternity deaths in the last 11 months, as doctors, fearful of doing prison time for upholding their doctor’s oath, watch women bleed to death on the table.

Since the first abortion ban was passed, human rights activists have filed several motions of unconstitutionality before the Supreme Court. The court, however, has failed to rule, apparently influenced by the same political and religious influences that have infected the rest of government.

“They are retarding justice; they are denying the rights of women,” said feminist leader Maria Teresa Blandón. “The court should have released a judgment on the constitutionality of the law in June, and it did not.”

Feminist leaders also have turned up the heat on protests recently. On 28 Sep, several dozen activists blocked major highways in downtown Managua to protest the abor ion ban. And a locally produced abortion-rights movie was released the same day, drawing an overflow crowd of 200 people to Managua’s Cinemark Theater.

Two days later, on 30 Sep, a near riot broke out in Managua’s Catholic Cathedral when the priest declined to give communion to three women who were wearing pro-choice t-shirts. The women, Catholics all, protested verbally, as the rest of the congregation evoked some good ole’ Old Testament wrath, pushing the women out of the church and calling them baby killers. The police intervened before the scene got any more medieval.

Having exhausted legal and political resources in Nicaragua, the women’s movement now plans to turn to the enlightened world to ask for help—or pressure—to reverse the situation in Nicaragua.

Missiles for Medicine

Foreign Minister Samuel Santos said on 3 Oct that talks with the US about eliminating his country’s stockpiled SAM-7 surface-to-air missiles in exchange for donations of medical equipment are “going well.”

Negotiations began on 2 Oct between President Ortega and a delegation headed by Richard Kidd, director of the Office of Weapons Removal and Abatement in the US State Department’s Bureau of Political and Military Affairs. Also taking part is the US Ambassador in Managua, Paul Trivelli.

The two sides are negotiating an accord by which Nicaragua would destroy 651 missiles and the US would provide much-needed high-tech medical gear.

The Nicaraguan government has said it will hold on to 400 for defense purposes, despite the US’ earlier insistence that Managua destroy all its missiles.

The missiles were purchased from the Soviet Union in the ’80s, and the US fears they could now fall into terrorist hands to be used to down a commercial airplane.

At the previous behest of the US, former President Enrique Bolaños destroyed 1,000 SAM-7 missiles during his term in office, in exchange for nothing.

Government Signs with IMF

Nicaragua’s tough-luck business sector finally has something to cheer about following the government’s announcement in Oct that it has reached an agreement to sign a three-year, $112-million economic program with the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

The IMF program, the third in the country’s history, comes after nearly a year of difficult negotiations between President Ortega’s economic team and the international lending organization.

The economic program, which was drafted by the Sandinista government to reflect a commitment to social spending and poverty relief programs, is being hailed as an important international stamp of approval on the country’s investment climate, which has gone through some rocky moments in recent months.

The IMF program, said Humberto Arbulú, Nicaragua’s resident representative of the IMF, is aimed at achieving better “governability, transparency and an improved climate for investment” by securing macroeconomic stability while at the same time providing clear and generous spaces for poverty relief programs.

Unlike the last IMF program signed with the previous administration of President Bolaños (’02-’06), the new program is based on new economic realities, such as increased international reserves, controlled inflation and increased tax revenues. The healthier macroeconomic situation, therefore, allows the new government to concentrate more on social spending, Arbulú said.

“This is new for us,” the IMF representative admitted. Still, Arbulú added, the annual 4.5% increase in social spending, while considered “substantial,” is calculated to be a level considered sustainable, with the end goal of boosting overall economic growth, predicted to reach 5% annually by the end of the three-year period.

In that sense, the program represents a compromise between the private sector’s demand for continued macroeconomic stability and the Ortega administration’s commitment to increasing social spending in areas such as food security, health, education and housing.

“This is the beginning of the solution to the problem of poverty in this country,” Arbulú said on 9 Oct.

—Tim Rogers