No path ahead

No words better describe the political scene this hot and steamy Nicaraguan summer than those of Rubén Darío—”No path ahead”— from “Lo fatal” (Fatalism), his most dramatic poem. We don’t know how November’s elections will unfold much less what might happen afterward... We don’t even know if there will be elections. And Nature is beginning to bill us for our abuse of her by exhausting the water that is so essential for life to continue along its path.

Envío team

The world and regional panorama has changed radically since Daniel Ortega won the presidency of Nicaragua for the third time in the 2011 elections. At that time the country’s economy was on the up and he had allies and partners all over Latin America, making it much easier to camouflage the loss of legitimacy due to the fraud that assured him an absolute majority in parliament. As he doesn’t have it so easy this time, he’s having to think his fourth reelection through much more carefully.

Neither allies nor partners

Ortega is increasingly isolated in Latin America. The death of Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez in 2013 quickly unleashed a political and economic crisis there that shows no signs of ending any time soon. And of course Ortega can no longer count on the same levels of oil and financial support from Caracas. Further south, Argentina has shifted drastically to the right. In Bolivia and Ecuador presidential reelection is in jeopardy for Evo Morales and Rafael Correa, respectively, his two allies in the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA). And in Brazil, the mega-corruption scandal engulfing Petrobras, the semi-public oil multinational, scuttled construction of the Tumarín hydroelectric dam here, one of the Ortega government’s strategic projects that had been heavily endowed with privileges.

If Venezuela’s problems hit Ortega in the wallet, in the Caribbean the blow hit the heart and is thus more symbolic. Cuba has had to lower banners it raised for decades and the changes the island will have to implement make the anti-imperialist speeches coming out of Caracas, La Paz and certainly Managua sound like a rhetorical caricature of themselves.

New times in our
own region as well

The US government is very present and much more active in this new and uncertain Latin American moment. In Central America, it has promoted important legal cases against corruption and human rights violations, affecting previously untouchable politicians and military officers in both Guatemala and Honduras.

Washington’s influence is being deployed in various directions. In his visit to Havana, President Obama was accompanied by Secretary of State John Kerry, who met separately with the negotiating teams of both the Colombian government and the FARC, that country’s most powerful guerrilla movement, to hurry along the peace process those two forces have been engaged in for nearly four years. It was somewhat of a surprise when the FARC, also a long-time ally of Ortega’s, said in a communique after the meeting that “we have reasons to believe that the United States is in a condition to see the FARC as a reliable partner in the building of continental peace.”

What path to take?

Despite the institutional, economic and political power Daniel Ortega has accumulated in these ten years of government, might such drastic changes in the continent and regional setting be making him reconsider the best path to take, as many others are doing?

Surely he’s analyzing the situation and understands how advantageous it would be to legitimate his next reelection, changing tack from the course set in 2011 in order to promote transparent elections. The only path to such legitimation would appear to be accepting credible electoral observation.

Visit by the Carter Center

Among the array of US actions and pressures in a region that’s shifting to the right, the arrival in Nicaragua of a delegation from the Carter Center in March definitely caught the attention of US-watchers. Led by Jennie Lincoln, director of the Center’s Americas program and an expert in electoral processes, it came to learn how Nica¬ragua’s November elections are shaping up.

The Carter Center has observed Nicaragua’s elections since 1990, when it played a crucial role. In the 2006 elections, when Ortega recovered the government, it was invited as early as January, allowing it to be here from March and organize its team to observe every step of the process and certify its transparency.

For the next presidential race, in 2011, the Carter Center visited in May and June hoping to meet with the Supreme Electoral Council (CSE), but was not received. The norms regulating observer actions, which the CSE didn’t publish until two months before voting day, also delaying the invitation to observers until then, were different than those of 2006 and violated international election observation principles. The European Union negotiated bilaterally with the CSE to relax the most problematic aspects of the regulations (freedom of mobilization and expression and freedom in the preparation of the final report), succeeding only for its own 40-member mission despite having requested that the arrangement be extended to both other international missions and, even more importantly, the national ones. Not until September did the Organization of American States (OAS) achieve similar flexibility for its 80 observers, but again this was not extended to the national observer groups.

It was at that point that the Carter Center expressed its willingness to participate and requested that the CSE accredit the national observers and modify the regulations for them as well. CSE President Roberto Rivas called the request “offensive” then offended the Center by remarking that that it had been dubbed the “Cartera Center” (cartera = billfold). With that the Center declined to participate, which Rivas defined as self-exclusion. This new exploratory mission is the first visit since then.

A counterweight
to power is needed

Will there be any electoral observation this year? For many, this is the key indicator of whether Ortega is genuinely hoping to legitimate his reelection. This “will he or won’t he” question constantly crops up in all analyses. If he does decide to open the doors to credible observers, it’s a sure sign he knows he doesn’t need fraud to win, possibly even with percentages similar to those of 2011, which many are convinced would have been impossible without fraud.

There are those who believe Ortega would lose in truly observed elections, while others admit he would win the presidency, but not the absolute National Assembly majority the CSE assigned his party in 2011 (nearly 63% of the vote, with even more legislative ballots “deposited” than presidential ones, an historical anomaly to say the least).

That steamrolling majority has been critical to Ortega’s strategy. In this five-year legislature, an FSLN bench that has dutifully pushed his legislative proposals through without changing so much as a comma has permitted him to reform the Constitution and the organizational laws of the Army and Police and hand the country on a plate to a questionable Chinese corporation through the canal concession law. Some would be satisfied if the electoral observation could avoid fraud in the distribution of legislative seats because even the big business leaders allied with the government agree that a counterweight is needed to the all-encompassing power Ortega enjoys today.

The delay in calling
this year’s elections

Why has the CSE let five months go by without formally calling the elections, after 30 years of doing so exactly one year before the established date? This delay only feeds the anxiety and general uncertainty surrounding the elections, with no end of rumors and speculations attempting to explain it.

Some believe that the later the elections are called, the later the CSE will invite observers—if in fact it does at all—and the shorter the time they will have to organize their work in the country. Others attribute the delay to internal contradictions in the governing circle over Ortega’s running mate.

Roberto Courtney, director of Ethics and Transparency, the main national election observer organization, believes the CSE’s “atypical” silence is simply designed to favor the governing party. “Lackluster and low-key election propaganda suits it because it promotes low participation. And that would assure its victory.” And it shouldn’t be forgotten that the 2014 constitutional reforms pushed through by Ortega included permitting the presidency to be won with any percentage greater than the opponents’.

Might a Constituent Assembly
replace the elections?

There’s even the absurd rumor, a product of the magical realist consciousness of part of the population, that there will be no elections because the eruption of so many active volcanoes in recent months—in what admittedly seems an almost orchestrated fashion—will provoke a natural disaster forcing the government to cancel them.

Still others say that, lacking a clear path for observation that would legitimize his victory, Ortega will replace the elections with a Constituent Assembly to rewrite the Constitution, turning the current heavily presiden¬tialist system into a parliamentary one and prolonging his term in the process. It’s an idea that has floated to the surface numerous times since the FSLN’s electoral loss in 1990.

This possibility contains several uncertainties. Would the current legislative body, with its absolute pro-Ortega majority, be automatically redefined as the Constituent Assembly? What contrivance would Ortega use to garb this idea in legality, given that he’s quite capable of inventing and getting the other branches of State—all of which he controls—to endorse just about anything? How long would this Constituent period be dragged out to extend Ortega’s mandate? What would a parliamentary regime involve, considering the total lack of checks and balances in the country Ortega currently governs? Would the change be reduced to simply naming Ortega head of State and his wife, Rosario Murillo, “prime minister,” thus ensuring family succession when Ortega is no longer around and eliminating the need for a Vice President, who by law would be first in line to succeed the President should it become necessary? How would the international community respond to such a political spin?

In due time

Back when the rumor mill was insisting that CSE president Roberto Rivas, the country’s most repudiated public official, had been removed from that post and awarded an Embassy in Europe instead in an attempt to give the electoral branch a facelift, Rivas publicly appeared on March 10.

He showed up at the event in which Cardinal Obando was formally designated a “national hero.” Besieged with prefab questions by the pro-government press that was allowed in, Rivas said the following: the elections will be called “in due time”; “Nicaragua is experiencing times of happiness” that will guarantee “peaceful” elections; it’s up to Nicaraguans themselves to observe them; and the CSE will also decide “in due time” whether or not to invite other observers. “I don’t think this is the moment to speak of observation,” he concluded. Rivas accompanied all these declarations with a relaxed smile, as if they were of little importance.

Will they participate or not?

There are also major uncertainties on the side of the opposition political parties. Although it’s hard to imagine, a question the directors of the National Coalition for Democracy are still being asked frequently, with barely six months to go, is: Have you yet decided whether you’re going to participate in the elections?

The coalition leaders have consistently said they will only run in the elections “if the right conditions exist.” When pushed to say whether they anticipate those conditions existing and whether they have a cut-off point, they say they’re prepared “for any scenario.” Some have even stated they could pull out as late as 24 hours before the race.

Headed by the Independent Liberal Party (PLI) in alliance with the Sandinista Renovation Movement (MRS), the Christian Democratic Union (UDC), the New Christian Alliance Party (PANAC), dissidents of the Constitutionalist Liberal Party (PLC) and a faction of the National Resistance Party (PRN), the coalition has just completed a year of holding street protests in front of the CSE every Wednesday morning demanding “free and transparent elections.”

Fabio Gadea says no...

Fabio Gadea, the candidate of a very similar opposition coalition in the 2011 elections, kept this one in suspense for a good while after it had unanimously chosen him to head its ticket again. After profound reflection, he announced on April 7 that he would not accept.

He gave his reasons in the format of his traditional “Love letters to Nicaragua” on Radio Corporación, the station he has headed for more than half a century: “Because I went through a similar experience in 2011, when I received a ton of votes that ended in enormous fraud and because no favorable change has been produced in the CSE to date.”

He listed the following “lack of guarantees”: “Party [FSLN] management of the ID/voter cards; an out-of-date electoral roll due to refusal to subject it to a serious audit; disrespect for the ballot boxes, ballots and electoral tallies; a dictatorial predominance of functionaries previously trained by the CSE but not defined in the Electoral Law; arbitrary expulsion of opposition table monitors; and the absence of legitimate observers, both international and national.”

Gadea, who is 84 years old, says that “if the proper conditions existed I wouldn’t hesitate to dedicate my last years to putting Nicaragua on the respectable path to democracy.” With the uncertainty about Gadea’s decision now over, the coalition is in an even more fragile situation. His candidacy would have brought various advantages: an important base of support, the backing of the opposition in rural areas and the avoidance of any need to build an image for him, since he already comes with a ready-made and full-blown one.

...and Noel Vidaurre says no

The uncertainty about Noel Vidaurre, proposed as the PLC’s presidential candidate by none other than Arnoldo Alemán to give the appearance of change in the party he controls, was cleared up as well. On April 5 Vidaurre declined to be the candidate of the “unity” Alemán created, after quarreling with him when Alemán put his wife, María Fernanda Flores, at the top of his party’s list of National Assembly candidates. “I was very clear with him,” said Vidaurre. “I don’t accept his relatives or friends being candidates. He needs to have new faces that give the party a new image and make him more credible. Will he fire me for that? I have no problem if he does.”

In the end they didn’t get rid of him; he resigned. This episode cleared up any uncertainty that may have existed about an opposition unity including those still in the PLC, dominated by Alemán’s family interests.

Will people turn out to vote?

In M&R’s first electoral poll of the year (February 25-March 6), 78.8% of those surveyed who don’t sympathize with the government said they planned to vote, not the low opposition voter turnout Ortega would like to see. That poll also revealed what the polling firm’s special projects director Olda Acuña described as the pre-electoral scene at the start of the year: a population polarized into two relatively equal parts, one of which accepts Ortega unconditionally, while the other side has no clue how he will act in the elections.

The uncertainty of the path this latter half of the population finds itself on is based on growing skepticism toward politics as well as mistrust of the opposition parties and their leaders. “Today’s politicians,” said Rubén Darío over a century ago, observing Spain’s political crisis, “are exhausting their energies in battles of isolated groups, in partisan affairs of the parties, without worrying about the common good or seeking any remedy to the general damage, the wounds to the nation’s flesh. No one knows what could come.”

That also pretty much sums up what is observed today in that half of the Nicaraguan population, especially among the youngest, best informed and professionally prepared.

The most fundamental
human right is in crisis

With some electoral uncertainties still not cleared up, Mother Nature spoke up with unadulterated clarity in March and early April. Her message was about safe drinking water, defined in Pope Francis’ encyclical, Laudato Si’: On Care for Our Common Home, as “a basic and universal human right, since it is essential to human survival and, as such, is a condition for the exercise of other human rights.”

The water crisis has become more evident this year as the effects of climate change—widespread drought the past two years with predictions it will hit again this year—have combined with ever increasing deforestation. The Centro Humboldt, Nicaragua’s most prestigious environmental organization, says that between 70,000 and 130,000 hectares of forest are lost each year, giving Nicaragua the dubious distinction of ranking sixth in the world for our deforestation levels.

To these two factors are added our deeply rooted environmental neglect. The result of all this is the drying up of artesian wells, rivers, streams and reservoirs, not only in the dry corridor traditionally affected in the years of cyclical droughts, but also in the entire Pacific zone and also the north. The water level has dropped so much in both of Nicaragua’s lakes that some dock pilings are now on dry land and one ferry that crosses Lake Cocibolca can no longer dock on the island of Ometepe. The scarcity of water is affecting the mono-crops of the big agricultural businesses, the subsistence production of small-scale farmers, livestock raising and even tourism.

Reactions in the Segovias

Residents and environmental organizations of the Segovias region, together with media and national organizations, Catholic parishes and their congregations have for months been denouncing the indiscriminate felling of pine trees in the more than 30,000-hectare nature reserve in the Dipilto-Jalapa mountain range in the department of Nueva Segovia, which was declared a protected zone in 1991. Although the cutting down of the trees began in October, a presidential decree actually authorized it on January 5 for a renewable one-year period. The decree referred to the “technical recommendations” of the National Forestry Institute, an institution directly answerable to the presidency since May 2014. The recommendations justifying the decree are based on the presence of a southern pine beetle plague, but other scientists question whether clearcutting the pine forests is the best method to halt it. Since the pine trees retain the water that feeds the rivers, their elimination throughout that zone has begun to dry rivers that empty into the Río Coco, which has seen its depth drastically reduced. Residents report that one can literally walk across the river in some places. According to environmental scientist Jaime Incer Barquero, the destruction of these trees could leave more than 250,000 people without water in Nueva Segovia’s 12 municipalities.

On March 8, International Women’s Day, organized women in the Segovias gathered on the banks of the Río Coco to clean and express their affection for it in various ways, honoring the example of Honduran environmental rights and indigenous leader Berta Cáceres, murdered allegedly by hitmen only five days earlier. They also honored nine other rivers in the area that have already dried up due to the massive deforestation. Standing on the banks of the now shallow Río Coco, the country’s longest river, they declared that “we are women with the right to the sustainable use of water, land and air and from here we promise to care for our rivers as we care for our own bodies… We are claiming that, far from being clients in electoral campaigns, impoverished women should have their potential recognized and be provided opportunities to cease being ‘protected’ and cease needing to depend on emigrating.”

The forecast

The Global Climate Risk Index put Nicaragua in fourth place among all countries last year. Climate change is a now irreversible phenomenon that will affect the entire planet but is already making our region especially vulnerable given its very narrow geography between two immense oceans. The only thing we can do is adapt, and that requires not only laws, which Nicaragua has no lack of, but political will and cultural change, both of them characteristics we fall dangerously short on.

A study by Managua’s Central American University (UCA) has analyzed the consequences of climate change on Nicaragua’s water sources. It foresees the reduction of the water table, which the Pacific depends on for consumption; heat waves that will affect both the quantity and quality of all bodies of water and a rise in the sea level of the Caribbean that will salinize surface water sources.

The National Hydric Responsibility Conference held in the UCA on April 5 stressed the urgency of changing our water squandering practices. A current radio announcement financed by Swiss cooperation to raise awareness of the problem plays on the letters “agua” (the word for “water” in Spanish) in the country’s name: “Hey, did you hear? They’re changing Nicaragua’s name! Now it’s going to be called Nicardry!”

“Never before seen”

What we’re experiencing today obviously isn’t just a product of climate change, deforestation and wastefulness. It’s also the consequence of an unsustainable development model based on extractivism and other destructive forms of exploiting our natural resources—water, forests and soils—as if they will last forever.

On February 18, in her daily message to the population, Rosario Murillo reported that the acquifers some 51,000 families in 34 localities across the country rely on are at risk. This situation has further deteriorated since then and could become even more depleted if the reports of another drought during this year’s rainy season are borne out. “We’re doing what we can,” said Murillo.

It seems that band aid solutions are no longer enough. “Never in the history of Nicaragua have we seen such intensive and extensive forest destruction as in recent years,” said Incer Barquero. He referred to the bribes with which the lumber mafias—including the government-run Alba Forestal—are buying off local authorities. Scientist Víctor Campos, director of the Centro Humboldt, has said that “so far there has been no demonstration of political will to bring national forest management under any kind of order.”

“The myopia of power”

In this respect, Pope Francis’s words in Laudato Si’, which links political and environmental responsibility, resonate with a special echo: “A politics concerned with immediate results, supported by consumerist sectors of the population, is driven to produce short-term growth. In response to electoral interests, governments are reluctant to upset the public with measures which could affect the level of consumption or create risks for foreign investment. The myopia of power politics delays the inclusion of a far-sighted environmental agenda within the overall agenda of governments. Thus we forget that ‘time is greater than space,’ that we are always more effective when we generate processes rather than holding on to positions of power. True statecraft is manifest when, in difficult times, we uphold high principles and think of the long-term common good.”

The governing party, which has made the “restitution of rights” one of its slogans, must take seriously the restitution of Nature’s rights. And the opposition parties must take the environmental agenda seriously when they put themselves forward as an alternative to the current government. They need to shake off their own myopia and think of the long-term common good because we are in “difficult times” and don’t know what may come.

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