Nicaragua's President
Is Aligning Himself With Venezuela
By Mary Anastasia O'Grady, Wsj.com
MANAGUA - With Iran and Venezuela in
political, economic and military cahoots,
Tehran has gained a foothold in South
America. Now Nicaragua is at risk of being
added to the list of authoritarian
governments aligned with Venezuela and by
association, its Islamic ally.
Whether that happens will depend heavily on
whether Sandinista President Daniel Ortega
succeeds in circumventing Nicaragua's rule
of law and destroying its democratic
institutions, as he is now trying to do. It
would be a mistake to underestimate the
magnitude of this threat because of
Nicaragua's relative economic unimportance.
This place matters strategically, as the
Soviets understood very well.
The Nicaraguan case is eerily similar to the
attempted power grab by Honduras's pro-Chávez
President Manuel Zelaya last year. But
Hondurans had a rather unusual leader in
Roberto Micheletti, an army sworn to uphold
the constitution, and a private sector that
refused to cut deals with Mr. Zelaya.
By contrast, Nicaragua's army leaders have
Sandinista roots and are well-known to have
many business interests they might not want
to jeopardize by challenging the status quo.
The private sector here is also not showing
much backbone against Mr. Ortega. Another
complication is former president Arnoldo
Aleman, who has been convicted of
embezzlement but remains the caudillo of the
opposition Liberal Constitutional Party.
Since a solid bloc of anti-Sandinista voters
want to end the corrupt traditions
represented by Mr. Aleman, his insistence on
maintaining power is damaging the democracy
movement.
The opposition has dubbed Mr. Ortega the
reincarnation of 1970s military dictator
Anastasio Somoza, in part because he has
taken over large swaths of the economy. The
principal Ortega vehicles are a series of
importing, exporting, real estate and
distribution businesses. They all share the
common acronym "ALBA," which stands for the
Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas and
capitalize on largess from Venezuela.
In one company, for example, Mr. Ortega gets
oil from Mr. Chávez at a discount but only
pays 25% of the Chávez price up front. The
rest is a long-term loan. Mr. Ortega sells
the oil at the market price and pockets the
gain. Another ALBA company has a monopoly on
agricultural exports to Venezuela; official
Venezuelan aid also flows through the ALBA
network.
By controlling these profits Mr. Ortega is
rumored to now be as rich as the oligarchs
he demagogues. The cash flow is also
supposed to allow him to buy the popular
support he needs while he's dismantling the
country's democratic institutions. But
investors are fleeing the country and the
economy is anemic. An electorate that never
was very fond of Mr. Ortega is growing more
dissatisfied.
None of this should matter, because Mr.
Ortega's term-limited presidency ends in
January 2012. But for the last three years
the aging commandante has been trying
without success to get Congress to change
Article 147 of the constitution, which
prohibits presidential re-election.
The Americas in the News
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In October, he came up with another idea: He
filed an appeal with the Supreme Court on a
Friday afternoon, alleging a lack of
equality under law because re-election is
permitted in Congress. On the following
Monday, after opposition judges on the
court's constitutional panel recessed for
the day, the panel's three Sandinista judges
called in three more Sandinista judges from
other court panels to convene a vote. The
prohibition was ruled "inapplicable," and
Mr. Ortega declared that the court had
cleared the way for him to run again.
Legal experts here—including a couple from
the political left I spoke with—say that the
judges' votes are beside the point. Only
Congress can change Article 147; the court
has no jurisdiction in the matter. But Mr.
Ortega is not backing down. Instead he's
working on stage two of his power-grab:
stealing the presidential election in
November 2011. In this he has experience.
After the 2006 presidential election, the
electoral council never produced, as
required by law, a detailed ballot total. To
this day it is unclear whether Mr. Ortega
won. In the 2008 municipal elections, fraud
was so widespread that even the European
Union and the U.S. refused to recognize the
results. Now there is evidence that the
Sandinistas are getting ready to steal the
March local elections in the autonomous
Atlantic coastal region. The common
denominator in all these cases is Sandinista
control of the national electoral council.
That council is now up for renewal and while
both Congress and the president can submit
candidates, only Congress can approve them.
It has refused to accept Mr. Ortega's
nominees. He has responded by decreeing that
the existing electoral council members will
remain in office indefinitely. The two sides
are deadlocked.
With polls showing anti-Sandinista sentiment
running at 60%, a lot depends on whether the
opposition is able to unite despite the
taint that Mr. Aleman brings to the
equation. But Nicaraguans could also use
some help from the international community.
When Peru's Alberto Fujimori tried to
steamroll democratic institutions in 2000,
democrats the world over rose up in
indignation. Where's the outrage now?
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