Riot police clash with protesters in Nicaragua capital

Well, I wish the liberals good luck in reforming the bent election rules and practices, but I’m pretty sure that even most of them know that the problem runs a good bit deeper.

The head of Nicaragua’s elections tribunal may well be the most corrupt public official in the country–unless of course we assume that he can afford private jets, fancy cars, and beachfront vacation homes on his salary. Also, while I won’t go into it in print, everybody in Nicaragua knows that his personal hold on power goes beyond accepting payoffs for electoral victories. Suffice to say that he’s safely entrenched in the power structure.

As long as this guy is running the elections, I doubt that any reforms will be worth the paper they’re printed on. I guess this leaves people to take to the streets and protest, though I doubt this will result in more than a few of them getting their heads bashed.

My personal preference is for dogged legal action against the elections tribunal, in local and international courts. This probably won’t succeed either, but if or insofar as it does, it has the benefit of strengthening the rule of law. Protests don’t do much if anything to strengthen the rule of law, so I fear they’re mostly a head-bashing waste of energy.

I saw the longest wall around a private home I have ever seen in my life. At 1st I thought it was around a huge hotel property until I asked a gardener on the street what was there behind the wall and he replied it was the home of the Finance Minister of Nicaragua!!! This was in Costa Rica !!! I had a construction job in a neighborhood on the way from San Jose to ciudad Colon. There is a road off to the right which leads to the nice neighborhood up the hill. I forgot the name of the community but it can be easily seen while driving on the highway west out of San Jose. This is past the mall and past the construction store off to the right.–Anyway if you want to see where the biggest thief lives–check out the property yourselves.

Before the end of the war with contras,Daniel Ortega was best friends with his cousin who was also his right hand man. The U.S. wanted Ortega to go Democratic and told Ortega so. Ortega refused and so the U.S. sent a couple of “spooks” to try to convince him by explaining that they would kill his cousin if he ( Daniel Ortega) didn’t go along with the plan. Ortega responded by putting a large contingent of men all around his cousin to protect him. Daniel had a certain deadline to meet this plan and when the deadline came and Ortega was still refusing to go along with the U.S.’s plan, a missile was logged over the wall of men and protection and killed Ortega’s cousin and best friend. Apparently after that happened Ortega decided to go along with the U.S’s plan. The spy ( spook) is named Chip Tatum and here is the you tube story ( or one similar so look at his other you tube entries if this is not the correct one) HERE: https://youtu.be/NF4uwLOkWBo Chip was recruited into working for the spy agencies along with Oliver North after he did a mission in S.E. Asia during the Vietnam era. He was supposed to be eliminated after this mission but thanks to the experience of his army friend POP,who was on the mission with him, he survived the double cross by the U.S. agencies and ended up working for them. . A truly fascinating story about flying drugs into Nicaragua and U.S. If Chip hadn’t had the where withal to write down details on his flight logs-and keep them as insurance- he wouldn’t have made it as long as he did. Is he still alive? I don’t know but I can almost guarantee that someone reading this probably knew or KNOWS Chip.( If Chip is still alive) What with all these retired spooks living here in CR- WE all know that some lived through these Nicaraguan Contra days and have settled here in Costa Rica. You never really know who your neighbor is do you?