On 7 November, presidential elections will be held in Nicaragua and independent polls predict a fourth consecutive victory for Daniel Ortega’s Sandinistas. He and his FSLN party are forecast to win with over 60% support against 20% for the country’s right-wing opposition. US imperialism, the former colonial power, has struggled to destroy Ortega’s socialist party since the Sandinistas overthrew the Somoza dictatorship in 1979. Another flood of anti-Ortega lies now fill the western press following the arrests, on criminal charges, of government opponents, steps which have frustrated current US scheming to create an electoral boycott movement, expel Ortega and put US proxies in his place.
Those arrested include former mem-bers of the counter-revolutionary US-backed Contras, money launderers, recipients of US funds, and nine members of the Board of the Blue and White National Unity Movement, representing organisations that promoted the 2018 anti-government protests, resulting in 328 deaths. In Nicaragua, those under investigation are ineligible for elective positions. The Nicaraguan government charges that the defendants undermined Nicaragua’s sovereignty and self-determination, and requested military interventions or foreign financing for terrorism and destabilisation. On 28 July Citizen Alliance announced that ex-Contra Óscar Sobalvarro, and Berenice Quezada, would stand for president and vice president.
Preventing subversion
This history of subversive funding and political violence against the elected Ortega government provoked the 2020 Law for the Defence of the Rights of the People to Independence, Sovereignty and Self-Determination for Peace. This aims to prevent US-funded groups indoctrinating young people. Foreign funding is restricted. Pre-trial detention was extended to 90 days, allowing more time to investigate criminal behaviour. A cybercrimes law criminalising ‘false news’ in the media and social networks targets provocateurs of violence directed against Congress.
The bipartisan 2018 US Nicaragua Investment Conditionality Act blocks loans from international financial institutions subject to US veto. This followed the failure of the wave of anti-government violence in April 2018, rejected by the great majority of Nicaragua’s people. More than $30m had been distributed to a range of groups involved in that plot.
USAID
In August 2020, leaked documents revealed a USAID contract planning to create an ‘environment for Nicaragua’s transition to democracy’. This requires contractors to prepare for three possible scenarios: an ‘orderly and timely transition’, ‘a sudden unanticipated transition’, or in the worst case for the US, a ‘delayed transition’. The contractor must work with the ‘democracy, human rights, and governance sub-sectors’, and influence political and civil society groups.
Sanctions were imposed on President Ortega’s daughter, a brigadier general, the head of the central bank, and an elected legislator. On 12 July 2021, US visa restrictions were imposed on 100 elected officials, members of the judiciary, and their families for ‘undermining democracy’. US imperialism intends to remove the whole government.
The economy
The picture painted of Nicaragua by the US propaganda machine is the opposite of reality. The Ortega government was returned in 2007. Between 2005 and 2016 poverty was reduced from 48% to 25%. From 2007 to 2017, per-capita GDP increased by 38%, more than its neighbours. Nicaragua is the safest country in Central America, with a low crime rate, limited drug-related violence, and community-based policing, with a homicide rate lower than the US. From March 2020 the US-directed opposition focused on discrediting Nicaragua’s prevention and control of Covid-19. This campaign failed as the government has coped with the pandemic reasonably well, without the severe economic problems experienced by El Salvador and Honduras. In April 2020, the Nicaraguan Press Office in London repudiated lies about Nicaragua’s Covid-19 campaign distributed through The Guardian and The Lancet. The US seeks to destroy the example.
Alvaro Michaels
Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! No 283, August/September 2021
