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| Central American University - UCA |
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Number 189 | Abril 1997 |
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Nicaragua
NICARAGUA BRIEFS
Envío team
DEMOBILIZATION OF REARMED HITS SOME SNAGS
A proposal by the new Ministry of Government to give amnesty to those in the rearmed groups who hand over their weapons caused intense controversy, since many of them have committed atrocious crimes over the past years and have engaged in criminal more than political activities. On February 14, the first 23 members turned their weapons in to government authorities and demobilized in San Pedro del Norte. Each person who demobilized received three acres of land, the promise of technical support for reinserting into civilian life as a producer and a safe conduct pass. The demobilization of the rest (some 500, of which 85% are "re-contras") was held up due to a chain of mistrust between the diverse groups and the government, forcing the deadline for definitive disarmament to be moved from February 28 to March 11.
EDUCATION MINISTRY OFFENDS PROTESTANTS
The Protestant community firmly rejected the suggestion of the Ministry of Education that the public schools use "faith education" texts prepared by the Catholic Church. The Constitution establishes that Nicaragua is a secular state and cannot give privilege to any religious faith. According to some estimates, about 25% of Nicaraguans are now Protestant, largely belonging to fundamentalist sects.
STATE PUBLICITY FAVORITISM ENDANGERS EXCLUDED
The government's decision to let only five publicity agencies (close to Liberalism) prepare the publicity for all state institutions caused great annoyance among the agencies that were excluded. The government is also giving its advertising spots only to media allied to the Liberals, producing the same reaction among those that are not. The state is the main advertiser in Nicaragua and its publicity accounts for a third of all national publicity (around $1 million a month). The measures caused such criticism partly because they were done without a public bidding process, partly because they affect freedom of expression (the loss of the state spots are already causing many radio news shows to teeter on the edge of bankruptcy), and partly because the media allied with the Liberals are not exactly the ones that the population reads, listens to or watches most.
BILL TO REGULATE NGOS DEEPLY DISTURBING
The government's bill to regulate nongovernmental organizations is very disturbing to the approximately thousand NGOs in Nicaragua, of which about three hundred are working actively. With this bill the government is attempting to establish financial control over the NGOs, through whom it is estimated that about $100 million enters the country each year for their programs and projects in training, consciousness building, promotion, and revolving credits for rural and urban micro- businesses. Such NGO- promoted projects provide employment for an estimated 25-30% of the country's economically active population.
WOMEN'S MOVEMENT FIGHTS MINISTRY OF THE FAMILY BILL
President Alemán's bill to do away with the Women's Institute and the Fund for the Protection of Infants in order to create a Ministry of the Family has the women's movement up in arms. Among other criticisms, the women say that one objective of this ministry will be to identify with a single family model -- the nuclear family -- as "ideal," that it implicitly reduces women's mission to the role of mother and wife; that it proposes as a state task formalizing the relationship of couples living in de facto unions through marriage; and that its aim is to extend the principles of Catholic morality to the entire Nicaraguan population.
SOMOZA AMBASSADOR SCANDALIZES POPULATION
President Arnoldo Alemán's naming of José Eduardo Somoza Sevilla, grandson of the founder of the Somocista dynasty and nephew of the Somoza toppled by the insurrection in which so many Nicaraguans participated, caused national indignation.
BUDGET BILL PASSED WITH SOME BIG CUTS
According to the controversial and extremely late budget bill submitted by the Alemán government, the Supreme Electoral Council (CSE) is one of several institutions that will suffer a severe cut in its resources. It requested 122 million córdobas and was assigned 27 million. CSE president Rosa Marina Zelaya warned that this will "paralyze" the still incomplete process of providing all citizens with voter/ID cards, will cause "transparency problems" in the elections for autonomous authorities in the Atlantic Coast in March 1998 and will force 600 CSE workers into unemployment. The CSE should provide permanent ID cards to 1.5 million Nicaraguans who were issued only temporary ones for voting purposes in 1996.
The budget bill also cut the funds for the Comptroller General's office, which requested 34 million córdobas and got 29.9 million. Liberal representatives suggested the possibility of transforming the Comptroller's office into an Auditing Court, in which decisions would be made collectively. This would be a retreat in the state modernization process and is aimed at neutralizing the active role that Comptroller General Augustín Jarquín has assumed in dealing with the corruption of public functionaries.
The National Assembly approved the budget on March 7, with 48 of the 93 possible votes (42 Liberals and 6 allies). Various legal irregularities and financial mysteries in the bill led the Sandinista and Conservative benches to firmly reject it after the intransigence of the Liberals and the lack of democratic debate turned the parliamentary session into a drama of ungovernability.
BUDGET LEGISLATION LEAVES MANY MYSTERIES
The most "mysterious" point on the spending side of the budget is some 940 million córdobas of the "domestic debt" whose origins the government did not make clear. (Payment of this debt and of interest on the foreign debt together make up 40% of total public spending in 1997).
The budget contemplates no wage increases and eliminates 351 municipal projects, but an even more controversial point is that it does not reflect a series of lines amounting to what the Comptroller General's office calculates as between 500 and 900 million córdobas (up to $100 million) that various ministries receive annually in the form of fines, commissions, taxes and other transactions. During the Chamorro government this kind of information vacuum was commonplace, and administration of these myriad small funds became a source of enrichment for a powerful ring of top-level government officials.
OFFICIAL AUSTERITY; OPPOSITION AUSTERITY
President Alemán announced an "austerity plan" for his government in mid-February, which will mean a 400 million córdoba savings for the state. According to the plan, only 5 individuals in each ministry will have an assigned vehicle, only ministers and vice ministers will have cellular phones and no executive branch representative will have assigned credit cards. According to estimates that are impossible to confirm, the ministers of the new government are allegedly adding to their "official" monthly $2,000 salary, on which they pay taxes, a salary "complement" that rounds off at between $20,000 and $30,000 a month in cash and sundry privileges on which they pay no taxes.
It was also announced that the number of state employees will be reduced by at least 12,000 as part of the Liberal government's austerity plan. At least 800 state employees at the central level have been swept out so far and a disproportionate number of Liberal "advisers" contracted for "ghost" posts in various ministries. The number of municipal workers who have lost their jobs in mayors' offices won by Liberals is high as well, according to all reports.
Meanwhile, FSLN representatives in the National Assembly presented a project to promote austerity among the legislators. They propose that there be no increase in the real monthly salary of some $4,000, but that it be affected integrally, as is that of all Nicaraguans, by the daily slide of local currency against the dollar and by the payment of income tax.
FOREIGN DEBT NOT SO REDUCED
David Robleto, the new Minister of Foreign Cooperation, announced that the Chamorro government's propaganda about reducing Nicaragua's foreign debt from nearly $12 billion in 1990 to only $3 billion in 1996 due to its persistent negotiations is false. The actual amount of the debt is $6.1 billion and the commitments acquired by Nicaragua for paying the service on it are "much stricter." Robleto said that the country will pay $257 million in interest in 1977, 35% of estimated the country's estimated export earnings.
NICAS IN THE US: RETURN SLOWLY BUT FOR FREE
In mid-December 1996, President-elect Alemán visited Miami to encourage the 200,000 Nicaraguans living in Florida to gradually return home, offering them tax-free introduction of their vehicles, household goods and instruments of labor. He urged President Clinton not to deport Nicaraguans, arguing that they still run a risk in Nicaragua, because "there is no rule of law." In February, the National Assembly approved an executive decree allowing Nicaraguans in the United States to return with goods valued at up to $200,000 without paying taxes on them.
TRAFFIC SIGNAL PLAN STILL CAUSING CONTROVERSY
After triggering a controversy about how to deal with street children that has still not died down, the government announced that it will put into effect a three-year plan to attend to some 63,000 children who live in extreme poverty and get those who work or beg at traffic signals, particularly in Managua, off the streets once and for all.
Within weeks of taking office, the new government swept up the children from Managua's street corners, treating them all as potential thieves who are dangerous to drivers and pedestrians and calling their mothers "criminals" for allowing them to be there. With each passing day, more of them are now back. The government did not give much detail on its three-year plan, but numerous NGOs that work with children, particularly street children, criticized its initial blame-the-victim approach and laid out more humane and viable methodologies for dealing with the problem, which has mushroomed in the last six years due to the harsh economic measures.
SOME ELECTORAL CRIMES WON'T GO UNPUNISHED
According to the Electoral Prosecutor's office, the over a thousand members of polling places who did not appear for work on election Day (October 20, 1996) will be summoned to court to face charges that could result in 1-2 years in prison. Not included in these figures are data about who committed this electoral crime in León and Rivas and in Managua, where the disorder was the most serious. Half of the list are not identified by the party that proposed them to the Departmental Electoral Councils for the job, but all parties are mentioned among the 536 who are. Those with the most cases are the Liberal Alliance (74), PRONAL (57), FSLN (41), Sandinista Renovation Movement (41) and UNO-96 (40), but a clear picture of what these figures mean would require knowing each party's total participation since it varied greatly.
FAMILY PLANNING THE CATHOLIC CHURCH WAY
In response to the challenge presented by the high annual rate of demographic growth, Nicaragua's Catholic Church began a campaign, with networks of promoters, to encourage family planning by natural methods. It particularly stressed the Billings method, based on abstention from sexual relations according to changes of temperature and humidity in the woman's body. Experts say this method is very complex for the daily culture of grassroots sectors, those with the highest fertility rate.
RISING SUICIDE RATE AMONG THE YOUNG
According to data from the National Police, 33 suicides occurred in the first 48 days of 1997. That contrasts with the total of 206 reported suicides in all of 1996, an average of 18 a month, and with the 132 in 1995. The majority of suicide cases are men under 30 years of age.
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a monthly magazine of analysis on Central America