The new Contra

Miguel Necoechea, La Jornada,  8 de julio 2021
https://www.jornada.com.mx/2021/07/08/opinion/015a2pol

The former Sandinistas were detained in recent days for breaking the law, not for being opponents. International news agencies have taken advantage of their revolutionary past to confuse world public opinion.

Let's recall.

The former sandinistas betrayed their revolutionary principles a quarter century ago. While they were still active in the FSLN, they demanded the resignation of socialism, of Sandinism, and the party's anti-imperialist policy.

When their position was defeated in the Extraordinary Congress of 1994, they resigned from the ranks of the FSLN to found what they called the Sandinista Renovation Movement (MRS).

Those who deserted were a minority in the FSLN Congress, since they did not have the support of the broad Sandinista rank and file. But they were mostly FSLN leaders, then.

The dissidents had held high positions in the government and in the party in the 1980´s, and for that reason they were candidates for congress in the 1990 elections.

The result was that the majority of the elected FSLN congressmen and women came from that small group that was ultimately dissident. As MRS members of congress, in 1995, they established a pact with the neoliberal right to reform the Constitution, eliminating from it the right to free health and education; legalizing the privatization of public services, instituting the second electoral round, limiting presidential reelection, and even establishing the qualified vote to elect magistrates.

The renovators, increasingly to the right and committed to US interests, in the 2008, 2011, 2012, and 2016 elections openly supported Nicaragua's neoliberal right-wing candidates. In their eagerness to destroy the FSLN, they went so far as to participate in anti-Sandinista meetings, led by Cuban counterrevolutionaries in Miami, from which they received support and actively participated in the elaboration of the Nica Act, sponsored by Ted Cruz and Ileana Ross-Lehtinen, both of Cuban origin and US congressmen for Florida, a law that essentially imposed draconian economic sanctions on the Nicaraguan people.

Later, with the support of these individuals and the United States, they set about preparing a revolt inspired by the “springs” created by Hillary Clinton, which would culminate in the overthrow of the legitimate government of President Daniel Ortega. Thus, during the failed attempted coup, they closed ranks with right-wing groups and leaders who called for the intervention of the Yankees and took the forefront of the counterrevolutionary armed actions carried out between April and July of that year, using as a facade to the world,  the self-convened youth, cannon fodder for the renovators, who, thanks to funding from the USAID and NED via the Violeta Barrios de Chamorro Foundation, FUNIDES, CINCO and others in Nicaragua, was sustained for several months. Among their purposes, the renovators tried to have the legitimate government imprison them and thus request intervention, even militarily, from the United States, alleging a so-called electoral fraud in 2016, violations of human rights and freedom of expression.

The investigations by public prosecutors and the national police have led them to discover high-powered weapons, hundreds of gallons of gasoline, huge amounts of dollars and cordobas, military supplies, pick-up trucks, warehouses full of food that immediately led them to follow the intricacies through which the dollars of the aforementioned Nicaraguan foundations passed.

Finally, to definitively distance themselves from Sandinismo, they eliminated that word in their latest creation, Unamos, which, knowing that they will not win the elections on 7th November, are once again preparing a coup, this time as the culmination of the RAIN plan, drawn up by the Department of State and the intelligence services of the United States.