Oriol Sabata, Nueva Revolución, June 16th 2021
https://nuevarevolucion.es/nicaragua-entrevista/
Jaume Soler i Pastells, miembro del Comité Europeo
de Solidaridad con la Revolución Popular Sandinista.
The mainstream media have once again put the spotlight on Nicaragua. Next November 7, General Elections will be held in the country and the television, radio, written and digital press that make up the media oligopoly are preparing the ground to be abel to ignore the results and claim fraud.
They accuse the government of Daniel Ortega of persecuting the political opposition, and the figure they are currently using to build this story is that of Cristiana Chamorro Barrios, an opposition figure who has been under house arrest since June 2 for money laundering.
Chamorro is being investigated by the justice system for laundering money, goods and assets through the Violeta Barrios de Chamorro Foundation for Reconciliation and Democracy, an non profit NGO she directed for 20 years and resigned from just before the launching her attempt to be a candidate for the presidency.
We spoke with Jaume Soler i Pastells, member of the European Committee of Solidarity with the Sandinista Popular Revolution.
Jaume, why is Cristiana Chamorro disqualified and under house arrest and where do the sources of financing of this NGO that she presided come from?
At this moment the Nicaraguan Public Prosecutor has opened a case against 7 people, among them Cristiana Chamorro, who are being investigated for the crimes of money laundering and conspiracy to undermine the country's sovereignty.
The funding received by the Chamorro Foundation came from US government agencies such as USAID, NED or IRI with the purpose of "promoting independent journalism" and were actually used to support media and logistically the failed coup d'état of 2018.
Other defendants are indicted for directly and personally requesting and lobbying with the US government to promote US intervention in Nicaragua, .
We have quickly seen statements from the US State Department, the European Union and the Organization of American States (OAS) calling Chamorro's arrest a "kidnapping" and labeling Daniel Ortega a dictator. Are these institutions acting in coordination with the media to endorse foreign interference and intervention?
Clearly so. Research in US public archives by US journalists - Ben Norton and the Grayzone team show that the ultimate goal of this whole operation is destabilization, interference and foreign intervention in Nicaragua with the 2021 elections on the horizon.
Do you think that the aim is to reactivate the coup movement that took place during 2018 and that had the support of the private business employers and the Episcopal Conference?
Undoubtedly. The interference and the attempt at control by the US, the European Union and their puppet organizations such as the Organization of American States (OAS) against countries "wayward" in bending to pro-imperialist strategies is a state policy the US has applied uninterruptedly since the end of the 19th century. And not only with the current propitiatory victims of the Yankee empire such as Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua, catalogued as "the evil triangle". Let's remember more recent issues such as Bolivia, Brazil, Ecuador...
Would the US or the EU tolerate in their own territory the financing of opposition groups with foreign funds?
Absolutely not. Most of the countries that are now self-righteously outraged have their own legislation to counteract any kind of foreign interference. In the case of the USA, this legislation has been in force for 83 years and the death penalty can be applied for the crime of treason. In this case, the total cynicism of the powerful becomes evident: they politically condemn and apply economic sanctions to countries and people who apply the same laws and protection mechanisms they themselves have had in force for decades.
Beyond this event, what is the political program and ideology behind the figure of Cristiana Chamorro?
Cristiana Chamorro is from the most recent generations of an aristocratic family that has controlled the country for almost 200 years. This anti-democratic elitist heritage is her only ideology and she exercises it with strict family loyalty and with minor alliances such as the family has made at every historical moment and with full gringo support and direction. This position of ancestral superiority obliges her to attack the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) with elitist remnants and at the same time she receives a great deal of internal criticism from many lumpen sectors within the street level coup activists, even if in only a covert manner. Where is an important part of the money she received from USAID? Where did the 7 million dollars that the Attorney General's Office found in her private bank account come from? Those are the questions asked by many of her former partners in the 2018 coup attempt.
Her supposed leadership of a putative right-wing candidacy isa chimera from a the febrile imagination of some paid hack. The Citizens for Liberty political party does not consider her as a candidate! Neither in her spotless little white dress nor with her "angelic" little face!
What motivates this campaign of harassment to demolish the Sandinista government?
In this new attempt by the coup-mongers and their associates to stop Nicaragua from being a social state, the one insurmountable difficulty has been and continues to be the FSLN, the reference point of a dignified and organized people.
In 1979 the FSLN defeated Somoza - "a son of a bitch but our son of a bitch" as the US put it - and despite a war of gringo aggression, with 50,000 dead, laid the foundations of a social and democratic state that lasted 11 years.
Now, after a 16 year parenthesis of ferocious neoliberalism from 1990 to 2006, this project of justice, independence and dignity has won three consecutive democratic elections. And everything indicates -even the gringo embassy opinion polls - that this popular project will continue to consolidate after November 7, 2021. The "only political program" left for the patricides is to destabilize the country and beg on their knees for foreign intervention.
In closing, would you like to add any point that you think is relevant we have not addressed during the interview?
Just a fraternal appeal to all progressive people: that we doa ll we can in each of our countries to support the struggle of the people of Nicaragua... and of Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, Peru, Brazil, Colombia, Chile... for a freer, fairer and more fraternal world.