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| Central American University - UCA |
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Number 131 | Junio 1992 |
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Nicaragua
NICARAGUA BRIEFS
Envío team
NATIONAL ASSEMBLY "REVISITED"
Last month we left Minister of the Presidency Antonio Lacayo sputtering with anger outside the National Assembly. Assembly president Alfredo César, Lacayo's brother-in-law, refused to grant him entry at the head of the economic Cabinet, alleging that he had not been specifically invited. On April 1, the economic Cabinet, its chief included this time, was ushered into the parliament to present the current economic situation. Its main message was that a full 70% of Nicaragua's population is suffering hunger.
SAME ISSUE, DIFFERENT PLACE
Antonio Gradiz, leader of the Farmworkers Association (ATC) in Chinandega, reported that more than 40,000 peasants and farmworkers in his department are completely indigent. He gave as the main causes government indifference, the current lack of interest in cropping cotton and the drought that has affected the northwest part of the country for the past three years.
SAME PLACE, DIFFERENT ISSUE
After backing down in his protocol maneuver with Lacayo, Alfredo César turned Robert's Rules of Order on the FSLN early this month. The Sandinista bench had nominated Rogelio Ramírez, brother of bench whip Sergio Ramírez, to replace Edmundo Jarquín as the Assembly board's second secretary, after family reasons forced Jarquín to abandon his legislative duties. But César, elected Assembly president over more rightwing UNO candidates last year only thanks to support from the Sandinista bench, did not want Ramírez on his executive board. Alleging a lack of quorum, César abruptly suspended the plenary session in which Ramírez's election would be ratified.
This awkward situation was resolved in an unexpected and tragic manner. On April 15, Ramírez died of a heart attack in Pyongyang, North Korea, where he had gone to attend the anniversary of President Kim Il Sung.
The day after a formal memorial ceremony for Ramírez in the National Assembly and a sizable and emotional popular one, the FSLN nominated Atlantic Coast representative Ray Hooker in his place. It surprised many journalists on the Assembly beat, since Hooker had not been mentioned previously among the candidates for the post. Although some right-wingers in Vice President Virgilio Godoy's Independent Liberal Party half-heartedly opposed Hooker's nomination, he was elected by acclaim on April 23, becoming the first legislator from the Atlantic Coast to sit on the seven-member executive board. The only other FSLN member is Reynaldo Antonio Tefel, minister of housing during the Sandinista government.
ELECTIONS IN THE SANDINISTA ORGANIZATIONS
Several Sandinista popular organizations, as well as the party's own departmental structure in Managua, held leadership elections in April. Some long-time leaders were re-elected; some weren't. Edgardo García was reconfirmed as head of the Farmworkers Association (ATC), Lucio Jiménez as head of the Sandinista Union Confederation (CST) and Daniel Núñez as head of the Union of Farmers and Ranchers (UNAG). José Angel Bermúdez, leader of the beleaguered National Employees Union, was replaced in that post but was elected to a sectoral leadership position that permitted him to retain a seat on UNE's executive board. Victor Hugo Tinoco replaced Dora María Téllez as head of the FSLN's departmental committee in Managua after hard-fought campaign debates with his rival Danilo Aguirre, journalist and member of El Nuevo Diario's editorial board.
PRESIDENT VIOLETA CHAMORRO FINALLY VISITS THE COAST
In what many costeños interpreted as grim irony, President Violeta Chamorro celebrated her administration's second anniversary by touring the Atlantic Coast in the days surrounding April 25. Admittedly, there was little to celebrate in the Pacific, but her only media event in the Atlantic was cutting the ribbon of a fancy new telephone system in Bluefields.
The Atlantic Coast currently has the highest unemployment (90%) in the entire country; the sale of Aeronica, Nicaragua's national airline, to Taca has left coast people with only land travel or pricey private flights; new tariff legislation has made goods even more expensive; this remote region is fast becoming a major platform for drug smuggling and use; Chamorro's government has failed to recognize the new autonomous governments in practice, much less encourage their development; private investors and pirate fishing fleets are devouring the region's resources with impunity; locals are still furious about the existence of the Institute for Development of the Autonomous Regions (INDERA), a ministerial-level institute created unilaterally by the central government in violation of the autonomy statute; and the government’s failure to pass a regulatory law for that statute leaves the autonomous governments virtually defenseless. Needless to say, popular disillusion and frustration is getting strong in this region that gave Violeta Chamorro one of the highest voting percentages in the country two years ago.
Her agenda was more like that of a First Lady than of a President—inauguration of a four-year-old hospital-clinic in Puerto Cabezas, baseball equipment for the Rama Indians, a tour of the shop that makes fiberglass boats at El Buff, breakfast with pastors of the different churches. In Puerto Cabezas, it took some fancy last minute maneuvering to even get the Regional Council, as the coast’s autonomous governments are called, on her agenda. The 48-member Regional Council there is almost evenly divided between Yatama and FSLN councilors, with only three seats occupied by UNO councilors. In her agenda for Bluefields, seat of the south’s regional government, she planned to meet with the UNO-dominated Regional Council, as well as UNO’s political council.
Many recently formed popular organizations in both regions hoped for the opportunity to meet with President Chamorro, to lay out their particular problems. Among them were the Unified Movement of Ex-Combatants, made up of members of the Miskito organization Yatama, ex-contras from the Southern Front and discharged soldiers from the Sandinista Army and the Ministry of Interior. They wanted to discuss the government's non-compliance with the promises it has made, their economic difficulties and projects they have drawn up for fishing, farming and commerce.
President Chamorro avoided any public statements on persistent demands from the coast that rules and regulations be approved to make the autonomy statute operative, that accords be reached regarding control and administration of the region's natural resources and allocation of the profits from their exploitation, or that INDERA be dismantled. In fact, although her press office had touted her trip to the coast for several days before her departure with a video spot shown on state TV, virtual silence followed her return to Managua. The dearth of news about her tour was particularly curious since her official entourage and the fleet of journalists who accompanied her required 2 big boats, 25 little ones and 3 barrels of gas just to get from Bluefields to the nearby port of El Bluff and back.
All is not negative on the coast, however. Hundreds of former Yatama combatants have turned in their weapons in the north and a joint North and South Atlantic commission on natural resources just presented a proposal to the central government’s Institute on Environmental Resources. The proposal is being studied by an inter-institutional central government commission as well as by the National Assembly’s commission on ethnic affairs. There also seems to be some movement on regulating the autonomy law in Managua.
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a monthly magazine of analysis on Central America