Yadira Cruz Valera *, Prensa Latina, 1ero de junio 2019
https://www.prensa-latina.cu/index.php?o=rn&id=280840&SEO=nicaragua-apu…
Havana (Prensa Latina). After several months of objections and obstacles on the part of the opposition, the Government of Nicaragua is moving towards the implementation of a consensual solution in search of peace.
The implementation of several agreements reached at the Negotiating Table, including the release of those arrested in the attempted coup d'état in April 2018, seems to be the definitive solution to the crisis that the country has been facing for the past 13 months.
Carlos Fonseca Terán, Deputy Secretary of International Relations of the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN), explains exclusively to Prensa Latina the complicated details of those events and the defeat suffered by the opposition in its attempts to overthrow Daniel Ortega's government.
That political crisis was promoted by an opposition whose scant strength is based on support provided by Washington, but - the Deputy Secretary pointed out - through the use of the most sophisticated techniques of media and psychological manipulation managed to influence a sector of the population. Their actions also included the conspiracy of the de facto power composed of the media, the Catholic Church, private companies and non-governmental organizations.
In telling Prensa Latina about the events of those days, Fonseca recalls how the confrontations plunged the country for three months into chaos, violence and instability, leaving hundreds of dead as well as people imprisoned, and with serious effects on the economy.
They went so far as to declare before public opinion a number of dead and wounded that never existed, he emphasized, including among the deaths they claimed the Sandinistas' own militants murdered by them, as well as common criminals and people killed in accidents or by other causes.
Official reports say the death toll is 199, but media outlets and right-wing spokesmen insist on rigging the figures.
By means of techniques of mass psychological manipulation and the use of lies, they managed to intensify internal subversion and at certain times had the support of some sectors of the population, but as time went by their lies collapsed, he said.
Analyzing the right wing and its role within the country, Fonseca Terán pointed out that it is not an organized political force, has lacked majority support of the people for a long time, and lacking the numbers and ability to mobilize people, their lasted only for a very short period.
Fonseca explained that the videos filmed by the opposition showing murders of Sandinista supporters created the opposite effect, leading to rejection among the population, which gradually realized the degree of manipulation of which they were victims by media both inside and outside the country.
An example of this is that before the events of April to June 2018 the government had 80 percent support, during the crisis it fell to 35 percent and at the moment it is over 50 percent, he pointed out.
For Fonseca, this achievement is based on the victory of irrefutable truth, based on the prestige and moral authority of the FSLN and the government.
Truth always prevails, when your principles are governed by ethics, love, the defense of peace, the highest moral and humanist values, and when you have moral authority, there is no force that can defeat you.
In the last decade, Nicaragua became one of the countries with the lowest rate of inequality and poverty in Latin America, promoted a policy of reconciliation and consensus, and has high levels of citizen security that was affected after those clashes, but which we managed to recover, he said.
Only in 2016 and 2017, the country maintained a growth rate of 4.7 and 4.5 percent respectively, between 2014 and 2016 general poverty decreased from 29.6 to 24.9 and extreme poverty fell from 8.3 to 6.9, according to official reports.
Faced with questions from those who see the negotiations as a sign of weakness, the Deputy Secretary of the Sandinista Front disagrees, expressing to Prensa Latina his views on this process which, after several months of objections and obstacles, has managed to consolidate a set of agreements in pursuit of peace and national stability.
Fonseca notes that although we have had to give in on some things, we are consolidating a great triumph, because we have defended the peace and stability of the country, in the midst of sanctions and imperialist aggression.
Our country has faced six direct and indirect interventions by the United States and in five of them we have triumphed, after Cuba we were the only country in the hemisphere that achieveda Revolutionary triumph through armed struggle, he recalled.
Sandinismo is a movement with a tradition of struggle, well organized, united and with a strong presence among youth, our military and police are revolutionaries and all of that is a guarantee.
I can assure you that we came out of this struggle stronger, because we challenged something that we had never faced before, he says, the application of one of the phases of the so-called soft coup, promoted by the American political scientist Gene Sharp.
Now, he stressed, we have experience and we have developed a defense mechanism for this type of destabilizing action, the hard work of that struggle has made us stronger.
The aggression of Washington and its allies against all processes of change, against all governments different to them, is increasing, but we are not afraid of defeat, Fonseca made clear.
We have become experts at recovering from setbacks, we continue to be victorious, and we are going to continue our work because we have favorable objective and subjective conditions in which to confront the enemy on all fronts and in all its forms of aggression.
We are used to dealing with all the difficulties inherent in revolutionary struggle, we have been formed in the hardest of battles, and we are also the result of a long combative tradition that began when we defeated the very first U.S. intervention in 1856, he emphasized.
* Journalist of the South American Editorial Office of Prensa Latina.