Jorge Capelán, Managua con Amor, August 10th 2021
https://managuaconamor.blogspot.com/2021/08/el-que-se-confunde-con-nica...
Mapa: Wikipedia
In Nicaragua, it can be said that the people voted already a long time ago. They voted in 2018 when the National Police and the Volunteer Police lifted the roadblocks of death and the true people flooded into the streets all over the country marching in defense of the Sandinista Government. That is one of the most significant news stories of that time and also the best hidden by the news media in the service of NATO, which is the same as saying the whole news media system in the Western world.
July 19, 2018, after the defeat of the coup attempt in April of that year, was one of the most massive celebrations of that anniversary in the entire history of the country, because in Managua alone 400 thousand people were mobilized, the entire Plaza de la Fe and the Avenue From Bolivar To Chavez full of people... from the department of Managua alone, because in the rest of the country, in all the municipalities, local events were held with massive attendance.
And the demonstrations continued throughout the rest of 2018 and well into 2019. Once, twice, three times a week, all over the country. The central event of July 19 of that year broke all records with a solid attendance of 500,000 people from all departments.
The coup-mongering, nation-selling opposition deflated very soon, as soon as it revealed what its real project was and how little it cared about "the old folks" and their pensions. Let's be honest, by the end of April 2018 we Sandinistas were already mounting massive demonstrations in support of the Government. And it was lucky Comandante Daniel and Compañera Rosario ordered strict discipline and to wait for the right moment to clear the criminals and terrorists from their nests. Otherwise, a civil war would have broken out and, as so many other times throughout history, the United States would have been ready to "help" the "Nicaraguan people" with its marines... just like William Walker with his filibusters, no more and no less.
Since then, the people have continued to vote in effect with their work, with their studies, with their faith in the future of the country... and the right wing coup plotters have continued to demonstrate two things: Firstly, that their only program is to destroy, sell out and partake in the imperial looting of the country. The second thing they have demonstrated is that nobody follows them. Don't blame their inability to mobilize support on the smallest and least well armed police force in the isthmus. If their project was anything other than to act as agents of the United States, then they would have taken advantage of the broad amnesty granted to them and participated in the dialogue process promoted by the Sandinista government. But they did not do so, because their project was not democratic, it was the opposite.
But then the right-wing coup plotters and quislings became arrogant. They did not pay attention to the fact that Nicaragua's institutional framework was being strengthened in a thousand ways with initiatives that enjoy the fullest popular support. After all, who is going to be oppose half of all public positions being occupied by women? Or oppose the fight against money laundering and organized crime? Who will object to curbing the plague of hate propaganda in social networks? Or oppose a law regulating the activity of foreign agents in the country? Or who object to political disqualification of those who betray the nation and call for foreign intervention?
Of course, La Prensa, the newspaper political party of the United States and the Chamorro Family opposed all that, but never took seriously the changes that were taking place... until the Sandinista Government did take them seriously and applied the rule of law to them. They were to planning to disrupt Nicaragua's elections as a pretext to call for an intervention, that is, another worn out variant of the violent failed coup attempt of 2018, but since they despised the existing institutions they did not even organize their own political party of their own, hoping instead to colonize the right-wing parties that did indeed already have legal structures. In the end, they found themselves politically marginalized and some of them even under investigation, waiting for their day in court.
In the November 7 elections, for those who know Nicaragua, there will be no surprises. It can truly be said that the people have already voted during the massive citizen verification day of July 24 and 25. Two thirds of the electoral roll, almost three million people out of a total of 4.3 million voters, went to verify their voting status at their polling place without any obligation or threat of sanction. It was a totally voluntary and civic act with the purpose of testing the solidity of the electoral structure of the country. It is logical to assume that the vast majority of the people who went to verify themselves will vote for the FSLN, as indicated by opinion polls.
People in Nicaragua are used to voting. Turnout figures are generally around 80% or more. The number of people who went to check their details for this election was three or four times more than usual. Over 95% of people said months ago that they already had a cédula and between now and November 7, all those who need a cédula will have one. Nicaragua's electoral roll today is of the highest quality in its history. The new identity cards comply with the most advanced technical requirements. People know this and that is why they trust the system, that is, the system built by governments of the Sandinista Front since 2007. These are not going to be elections like those won by Arnoldo Alemán in 1996, with ballot boxes and voter lists found thrown into riverbeds and rubbish dumps.
And definitely, and no matter how many threats come from the United States, the elections of November 7, 2021 will have nothing to do with those of February 25, 1990 in which the Nicaraguan people had to go and vote with a gun to their temples: The US embassy declared during the campaign that if the Sandinista Front won, the war and the blockade of the country would continue. The Nicaraguan people of today know very well how bitter the neoliberal night that followed those elections was, and if they are too young to have realized that, then they do know, based on their own vivid experience, that they can never give the reins of the country to the coup mongers that wanted to destroy it in 2018.
And besides that, the Nicaraguan people today know that they have public health that they did not have before; that they have hospitals that they did not have before; that they have free education that they did not have before; they have schools and free school meals that they did not have before, university scholarships and technical education they did not have before; they have highways, bridges and streets they did not have before; they have fire stations and civil defense they did not have before; they have property titles and access to housing that they did not have before; they have electricity and water they did not have before; they can afford bus fares they could not before; producers get technical assistance and credits they never had before; women have access to specialized police services they did not have before; people have beautiful and safe recreational spaces they did not have before; access to cultural and sports facilities they did not have before; and they receive respectful, dignified treatment in any public office they did not get before. In short, Nicaragua's people have a sense of dignity in being Nicaraguan that before had been really badly damaged.
For those of us who live in Nicaragua, what I have just described is nothing new. Anyone who says this is not so is lying. As a recent popular song goes "if my song upsets anyone as they go by, I promise you they're a gringo or a big time landowner".
For all these reasons, the decision of Argentina and Mexico, two supposedly progressive governments in Our America, to call home their ambassadors in Managua, supposedly out of "concern" over all the lies the United States says about the country, ts really astonishing. Such "concern" does not sit well with either Alberto Fernandez or Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador. The former should know that the Argentine Republic has a very big debt with Nicaragua, because it was Argentine military personnel that trained the Contras to torture and murder during the war of the 1980's, and today, with this kind of made-in-Washington "concern" about Nicaragua he is doing nothing else but take sides with the same criminals 40 years on. For his part, AMLO should know that he is breaking with the honorable Mexican tradition of non-interference in the internal affairs of other states, a tradition that not even the most right-wing Mexican administrations dared to blatantly violate. When AMLO says he does so "with all due respect". We were not born yesterday and we know disrespect when we hear it, even if it is pronounced "respectfully".
Finally, we find the recent unhappy declarations of the Brazilian leader Lula about Nicaragua cause us, not just astonishing, but painfully absurd. In an interview for his country's television, Lula says "Nicaragua has problems" noting that he thinks "alternation" of government would be good for Nicaragua and that he has always been a great friend of "alternation". On ehas to ask whether Lula suffers from Stockholm Syndrome? It seems that three years of imprisonment at the hands of neoliberal politicians in the name of his beloved "alternation" have made the Brazilian leader think like his jailers. In other words, if "alternation" is "good" for Brazil everything is perfectly fine with the fraudulent impeachment of Dilma and the subsequent shower of steel "alternation" of the Bolsonaro administration.
Thanks, Lula, but we don't like that kind of "alternation". We already had 16 years of long neoliberal darkness, but in our case, unlike Brazil, we have armed forces with popular and revolutionary roots that ultimately respect the will of the people. Fortunately, we have good and proven leaderships elsewhere in Latin America, such as those of our ALBA countries, but there are other leaderships that have a lot to do in order to live up to the dreams of Bolivar, Marti, Sandino, Fidel and Chavez. For us in Nicaragua it is quite obvious: Whoever gets Nicaragua wrong, gets Abya Yala wrong too.