Fabrizio Casari, Altrenotizie, June 30th 2019
http://www.altrenotizie.org/in-evidenza/8504-nicaragua-una-destra-trist…
published in Revista Nicaragua Sandino, May 6th 2021
Note by TcS - this prescient article from 2019 is worth re-reading for it's insight into the failure of the Nicaragua's right wing opposiiton coup promoters and the corresponding success of the coutnry's Sandinista government led by preisdent Daniel Ortega and Vice President Rosario Murillo
A dash of cold water in the face of Nicaragua's right wing, has been pretty much the result of the recent OAS meeting which failed to vote to apply the Democratic Charter to Nicaragua.
Although the hostility of the continental right wing towards the Sandinista government is solid and its worst exponents continue to support mounting a coup in Nicaragua, it does not have the numbers to be able to open a successful procedure against Managua.
Despite the support of the US, Canada, Colombia and Chile, Nicaragua's coup perpetrators and their allies got only "generic and non-binding encouragement to resume the dialogue between the government and the opposition".
A ridiculous exhortation in itself: the government has been sitting at the table for almost a year and the so-called "opposition", divided within itself, gets up and sits down every day presumably to show that it exists. Their attempt to act out a role, through blackmail and external pressure, is a flop. They were and remain irrelevant to any reform process.
The OAS document, approved by a relative majority, despite its essential insignificance, is still an act of interference in the internal affairs of a member country. So, being condemned by several countries, now well identified as going along with the United States, is a clear sign of the organization's terminal decline.
On the other hand, the outcome of the meeting underlines one more time that Nicaragua's Chamorro family is doomed to frustration, as they desperately tour the world calling for sanctions against Nicaragua. Its members travel around with a retinue, funded by U.S. money, getting their pictures taken as if they were on a school outing, setting out each time full of hope only to return each time in despair.
Why doesn't an organization like the OAS, certainly mostly right wing and notoriously hostile to Sandinismo, offer its full support to the new Contras?
There are different reasons, but in short, two are the most important. There is a political-legal aspect: most member countries do not want to set a precedent of that kind of interference in a country's internal affairs since doing so violates the spirit of OAS Charter, which instead defends countries from the risk of violent destabilization.
And, while they certainly do not act out of respect for international law, they at least oppose it out of fear that any violation of a country's national sovereignty today could tomorrow happen to them, with a different political balance of power.
But also, there is a political judgment of the Nicaraguan oligarchy's reliability, a judgment which certainly does not favor immediate support. The obsessive search for sanctions against their own country does not help the Nicaraguan coup mongers win international recognition.
The opportunist positions of the Chamorros, repeating every day yet another episode in the comedy narrative of ferocious repression, transforming serial criminals into prisoners of conscience and crying out against tortures that are never exhibited, all of that now arouses more perplexity than trust.
This obsessive campaign of lies and the utter unreliability of the characters - among the most tainted and corrupt in Nicaraguan history - has ended up with a death sentence in terms of trust.
In short, Nicaragua's coup mongers do not represent a credible way forward, even for those against the Sandinista government, for example, as Luis Almagro, the Secretary General of the OAS, made clear in an interview with a Colombian newspaper, in which he repeatedly praised President Daniel Ortega, recognizing that Daniel Ortega has made, "despite the lack of resources, important efforts for the welfare of his people" and saying he was convinced that "Ortega does govern Nicaragua".
These may seem obvious remarks to make, given the well-recognized stature of Comandante Ortega, but they are not only that: they are also an important acknowlegment, effectively inhibiting any coercive measures and certifying the validity of steps towards the reform of the electoral system, in view of the elections scheduled for November 2021. The right wing are proving him right.
Unlike what the high priests of intolerance preach in the Nicaraguan oligarchy's media outlets, Almagro did not suddenly become Sandinista: all he did was gauge the unreliability of the opposition versus the reliability of the government, which honors all the commitments it assumes both internally and internationally and, in fact, goes even further by making big concessions in order to achieve peace.
Everyone can see that political hatred of Sandinismo intersects with class hatred of the impoverished beneficiaries of the structural reforms and the modernization of the country Sandinismo has achieved. It is also clear to the Nicaraguan opposition's international allies that the purpose of the ecclesiastical and oligarchic hierarchy's program of political action is to get country back under their control.
Because in the end, this is what it is all about. The project of the Chamorro family and its allies is to regain possession of a nation that is now attractive for good investments, has transformed its infrastructure, is financially stable and has a respectable primary surplus, with an important level of both energy and food self-sufficiency.
The notorious political project of the Civic Alliance is this: to get their hands and teeth in the country so as to start devouring Nicaragua again just as they did from 1990 to 2006.
And just as their international credibility is minimal, so too they have a progressive loss of credibility at home, caused by their unending lies. The Civic Alliance members' work on behalf of the most nefarious oligarchy as well as seeking foreign sanctions against their own country, have rendered them damaged goods in the eyes of Nicaraguans. Even those who cultivate anti-Sandinista feeling find it very difficult to see a possible useful vote amidst Nicaragua's right-wing chaos.
It is no coincidence that only Trump's Cabinet pays them much attention because by comparison, even the Chamorros look like moderates. But, the fact that sanctions are being applied against some Sandinista leaders looks like a Pavlovian reflection of an administration that finds itself in a dead end.
Their obvious miscalculation on Nicaragua, as on Venezuela, led them to confuse the lies of a power hungry oligarchy with socio-economic analysis. They were fooled by fanciful accounts of the balance of forces on the ground, fed by an invented narrative of majority opposition support.
Having uncritically involuted and identified with the self-serving narrative of a gross ruling class, eager only to soak up money and enjoy the high life, the White House's ability to work out a sensible policy line has been seriously compromised.
It could not have been otherwise. Letting Mike Pence, Mike Pompeo, Marco Rubio and Elliot Abrams decide U.S. policy in Latin America, produced ideological whims instead of sophisticated analysis. After all, rather than a strategic cabinet, that group of officials looks more like a ramshackle caravan of bloodstained evangelical Nazis.
Of course, the US aspires to get the scalp of at least one of Latin America's progressive governments and in Nicaragua's case they would try particularly hard to get revenge for the setbacks suffered by the US in Nicaragua's history. So it is normal that they prepare, finance and support a coup. But the failure of the attempted coup, consequently, has also meant a failure for the White House.
The Sandinista government, for its part, has honored every part of the agreement it signed with the opposition which, by repeatedly getting up and then sitting down again at the table as if it were a gymnastic exercise, did not contribute in any way to the fulfillment of the agreements, thus making themselves irrelevant to national political decision making.
The criminals amnestied are free and this causes discontent, both in the FSLN itself and in the population that was victimized by them. But on the national and international political chessboard, having stolen the right wing's most important propaganda weapon, gives new seriousness and credibility to the government. What Nicaraguans want, which with wisdom and good faith they see as indispensable, is for the country to return to the path of the structural reforms undertaken since 2007.
And not only has Nicaragua released hundreds of detainees, in accordance with the Constitution, which ordains re-educative rather than simply punitive punishment, but it is also continuing without pause on the road to economic and social development. Funds obtained via international loans, have just been allocated to build a new hospital in Leon, which will be the largest in the country. The highway that directly connects the Caribbean Coast with the Pacific coast has been opened. So eight hours by car now connects Nicaragua from West to East and it is easy to see the potential economic and commercial benefits of this, as well as the utility in terms of public and private mobility.
Never in the history of the country has so much been imagined and achieved. An extraordinary path of success, which only awaits to be ratified in 2021, when the elections will reaffirm once again that Sandinismo was and remains the only valid program for Nicaragua.