Stephen Sefton, Tortilla con Sal, 28 de agosto 2022
The municipal elections called by the Supreme Electoral Council for November 6th will be another significant step confirming and consolidating the definitive sovereign independence of Nicaragua and our entire region. In Nicaragua, apart from the main anniversaries of the Patriotic Celebrations, Independence Day and the Battle of San Jacinto, the month of September is also associated with many other historical events in the struggle for national sovereignty. September 2nd is the anniversary of the founding of the Army for the Defense of National Sovereignty in 1927 by General Sandino along with his officers and soldiers.
This was an extraordinary exercise in defense of national sovereignty at a historical moment when the arrogant Yankee invaders arranged through the usurper regime of Adolfo Díaz to give Colombia dominion over Nicaragua's Caribbean islands of San Andres, Providencia and Santa Catalina. Forty-five years later, in September 1972, during the Liberal-Conservative Junta under the dictatorship of Anastasio Somoza, the United States government, without the participation of Nicaragua, handed over to Colombia Nicaragua's Caribbean territories, Quitasueño, Roncador and Serranía.
It is worth recalling these facts in the year of the tenth anniversary of the judgment of the International Court of Justice in 2012 with which Nicaragua recovered more than 90,000 square kilometers of its maritime territory in the Caribbean Sea. This tremendous victory of international law reversed centuries of imperial domination and vindicated Nicaragua's rightful sovereignty as both a Central American and a Caribbean nation. It was another big step in the process of the emancipation of Latin America and the Caribbean from the terrible legacy of the centuries of imperialism.
One way in which this heritage manifests itself in the contemporary reality of Latin America and the Caribbean is precisely through the persistent problems of territorial boundaries. For example, the disputes of Nicaragua with Colombia, of Venezuela with Guyana over the Esequibo, between Bolivia and Chile over Bolivia's access to the sea and over the waters of Silala all continue. Also still pending, of course, is the issue of the occupation of Guantanamo by the United States, that of the decolonization of the Malvinas Islands, Puerto Rico and the status of other territories in the region nominally territories of European countries such as France, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom.
A further manifestation of the imperialist heritage we still face in Nicaragua is the historical clash between, on the one hand, a steadfast, indomitable defense of national sovereignty and, on the other hand, the vile surrender proposed by national political forces sponsored and promoted via North American and European intervention. We see this pattern repeated even today, even despite the categorical defeat of the failed coup attempt of 2018. Increasingly weakened inside Nicaragua, the quisling, sell-out political forces loyal to the governments of the United States and its allies, are always looking for ways to serve their masters and patrons in one way or another.
But repeated election results show that the sell-out forces lack the electoral support to take power constitutionally, nor can they do so even unconstitutionally, as their defeat in 2018 showed, since they lack the ability to take power by force. As the fervent patriotic chant affirms, “They could not prevail then, nor will they!” Local polls show too that they lack even the propaganda strength to dominate national public opinion. Furthermore, the country's economic stability and the relative boom in exports show they do not have the economic strength to twist the arm of the government authorities in exchange for political concessions to the taste of the empire.
So, at the national level, Nicaragua's extremist opposition only have the option of committing political sabotage and provocations of the kind recently undertaken by the reactionary sectors of the Catholic Church, nostalgic for the lost political and economic influence which they will never be able to recover. However, these provocations continue to play a useful role for the extremist opposition's foreign patrons in the sense of facilitating the projection internationally of a series of falsehoods to discredit Nicaragua and its Good Government and thus create pretexts for some kind of foreign intervention. They are the same psychological warfare falsehoods the North American and European elites project against all the world's peoples, governments and political movements that resist their domination.
In many cases they are even the same kind of falsehoods used against Sandino and his Army in Defense of National Sovereignty by the colonial occupation regime of that time. The now routine false accusations include lack of respect for human rights, alleged abuses of all kinds, repression of freedom of expression and lack of popular legitimacy. The West's vast global psychological warfare machine projects invented and ready-made false accusations worldwide via reproduction on an international industrial scale, made possible thanks to the West's corporate monopoly of the marvellous digital technology of our times. This enormous psychological warfare apparatus allows them to censor genuine information while promoting multitudinous lies and slander to proliferate without limit.
In this context the municipal elections in Nicaragua, being carried out by the country's institutional authorities under the People as President, have enormous significance for the country. In the same way as the national elections of last year took place successfully, the mere fact of the peaceful and calm municipal electoral process is and will be a tremendous blow to weaken the intense psychological warfare being waged against Nicaragua's sovereignty, against its people, its government and institutions. One might even argue that the municipal elections of this year 2022 are even more significant than the municipal elections of 2008.
Those municipal elections of 2008 demonstrated categorically for the first time since the electoral defeat in the national elections of 1990 that the Sandinista National Liberation Front had again achieved a majority of electoral support even facing a united electoral alliance of the country's right wing political forces, That is the reality Nicaragua's right wing refused to acknowledge and accept at that time, when Eduardo Montealegre and Dora María Tellez joined with the PLC of Arnoldo Alemán. And that popular victory of the Sandinista Front was the electoral springboard giving the necessary impetus to the government of the People as President to triumph definitively in the national elections of 2011.
There is another anniversary in this Patriotic Month of September that is also very important for Nicaragua in the national and international context. On September 3rd 1987, Nicaragua's National Assembly approved the Statute of Autonomy of the Atlantic Coast Regions, which we now know in all its dimensions as our Caribbean Coast. And these upcoming municipal elections will confirm the process of consolidating the faith and trust that the different original, Afro-descendant and mestizo populations of the Caribbean Coast regions have in the Sandinista National Liberation Front as their natural electoral option. Works such as the new Bilwi regional hospital, the connection of the region to the national electrical power system and the crucial bridge over the Wawa River together with the region's extensive new hydraulic concrete road network, reflect the reality of Nicaragua's integration as a truly pluricultural sovereign country.
So, this coming September will serve as a kind of prelude to a new electoral exercise embodying the undeniable expression of national sovereignty and independence and of the emancipation of the peoples of the region from the effects of centuries of imperialist domination. The municipal elections of this year 2022 will be an exceptionally important consolidation of the Victories of the People as President. The Economic Victory of having overcome the losses caused by the failed coup attempt, the Covid-19 pandemic, by natural phenomena and by the illegal coercive measures of the great Western powers. The Cultural Victory of having achieved the fullest, genuine integration and self-determination characterizing a truly Pluricultural State. The Social Victories of universal, free, high quality Education and Health systems. And the Victory of Nicaragua's Civil Institutions represented by the self-same electoral process, trustworthy, efficient and transparent.
All these victories represent the resilience of the People as President and an insurmountable bulwark against the endless campaigns of lies and slander waged abroad by Nicaragua's enemies. They are a powerful motive to doing everything possible to ensure high voter participation in municipal elections that normally have a lower participation than national elections. The current context highlights the importance of unity, teamwork and determination to join forces to the extent possible, all of which will achieve a level of electoral participation optimizing the legitimacy of our municipal authorities based on the concept of the People as President. These municipal elections of 2022 offer an ideal opportunity to seal the present and future triumphs of Nicaragua's People as President promoted by the Sandinista National Liberation Front.