Daniel Ortega's Nicaragua:
The Show Goes On
From The Economist
MANAGUA - The smashed windows and broken
doors have been replaced, but daylight still
shines through holes punched into the porch
of the Holiday Inn in Managua by home-made
mortars. On April 20th the hotel became the
latest battleground in Daniel Ortega’s
struggle to remain president of Nicaragua
after his term ends early in 2012. Faced
with dismal poll ratings and constitutional
obstacles, Mr Ortega has taken to unleashing
mobs.
The constitution allows a maximum of two,
non-consecutive terms. So Mr Ortega, who was
president from 1985 to 1990, is doubly
barred. But last year his political allies
in the Supreme Court ruled the relevant
articles “inadmissible”. Faced with losing
his majority on the court, Mr Ortega decreed
an extension of the terms of the obliging
judges. He also extended the tenure of
senior officials at the national election
council, which had allowed his party, the
Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN),
to claim victory in municipal elections in
2008—elections that the opposition and
observers denounced as rigged.
Opposition parties, which together hold a
majority in congress but seldom agree on
much, have united against all this. That
prompted Mr Ortega’s ruffians to block
access to the National Assembly. When the
opposition assembled at the Holiday Inn,
that became a target. The following day, a
group of legislators was trapped in a
meeting room by another violent crowd.
Some in the outside world are losing
patience with Mr Ortega’s thuggery. The
Organisation of American States piped up to
express its “deep concern” about the latest
skirmishes. Britain, Sweden and Denmark have
cut off aid to Nicaragua, while the United
States, the European Union, Germany and
Japan have either scaled back theirs or
imposed more conditions. This matters in a
country with an income per head of $2,600 a
year, the lowest in Central America, and
where horses and carts still plod the
streets of what passes for the business
district of the capital.
But it matters less than in the past. Mr
Ortega has a firm ally in Venezuela’s Hugo
Chávez, who provides loans and cheap oil
worth up to $400m a year—about a third of
the government’s total income—according to
opposition leaders. Mr Chávez is even more
anxious to prop up Mr Ortega since his other
Central American ally, Manuel Zelaya in
Honduras, was overthrown in a coup last
year.
Nobody expects Nicaragua’s army to intervene
as its counterpart in Honduras did. And
though a poll last month put Mr Ortega’s
popularity rating at just 27%, his
supporters are well-organised. Even if next
year’s election is fair—a big if, requiring
international observers and a new electoral
council—Mr Ortega might still be hard to
beat. He won in 2006 with just 38% of the
vote, because the opposition was split. “If
we don’t have a sole candidate, the
Sandinistas could win again,” admits Eduardo
Montealegre, who leads the Independent
Liberal Party and came second last time.
“But if we do, they don’t stand a chance.”
The mobs have other ideas. |
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