Managua
October 8, 1996
This piece is an expanded version of an article published online January 1997 by Sintonia, una Revista de Estudios Culturales para Latinoamerica, Centro Universitario de Ciencias Sociales y Humanidades de la Universidad de Guadalajara, http://fuentes.csh.udg.mx/CUCSH/Sincronia/costantini.html. Thanks to Steve Gilbert, Editor, for publishing it.
As the dust from Nicaragua's October 20 elections began to settle, a taxi driver summed them up with an ambiguous grin: "Our disorder is very well-organized."
He could have been implying fraud by the winners. Or he could have been accusing the losers of taking advantage of disorganization to cry fraud. Or he could have been criticizing the baroque electoral procedures. Perhaps all three.
Compared with an smooth-running 1990 vote with massive foreign funding, Nicaragua's electoral machinery ground gears and belched smoke in 1996. The problems-polling places that opened hours late, discarded bags of ballots and tallies found by the police, an error-prone communications system, near riots when exhausted poll workers did not receive full pay-raised tensions and postponed a clear resolution.
Foreshadowing these failures, the former president of the Supreme Electoral Council, Mariano Fiallos, had resigned a few months before. Fiallos, whose leadership in Nicaragua's first democratic elections in 1984 and 1990 was widely praised, said that the budget for the elections was insufficient and that a new electoral law had left the process too politicized. Events confirmed his criticisms.
After a recount, Arnoldo Alemán of the right-wing Liberal Alliance won a clear 51 to 37.75 percent victory over Daniel Ortega of the left-nationalist Sandinista Front for National Liberation (FSLN). Ortega has reportedly indicated that he will accept his loss of the presidency. The FSLN and several minor parties, though, requested annulment of the elections in two areas because of the widespread irregularities.
In the emerging political landscape, a conservative president will face a National Assembly evenly divided between right and left. Although the Alemán's coalition has five more votes than the Sandinistas, it lacks an absolute majority, so several small parties will hold the balance of legislative power. Recent constitutional reforms have reduced the power of the executive, increasing the need for parliamentary horse-trading.
The Liberal victory represents a Thermidorian reaction against the declining Sandinista revolution. Alemán and some of his inner circle were close to the Somoza dictatorship, which the Sandinistas overthrew in 1979. The Sandinistas, though, remain the largest and most cohesive single political force in the country, with influence in the army and police. At their final campaign rally, the FSLN attracted a crowd about three times larger than the Liberals did at theirs.
This polarization creates a delicate standoff. If the Liberal government attempts to take vengeance against their old adversaries, to take control of the military, or to implement draconian economic measures, the Sandinistas and supporters could put up serious resistance in the streets. But the economy requires stability to create jobs, and anyone who disrupts this will pay a political price.
Many Sandinistas fear that the Liberals will bring back the Somoza dictatorship without Somoza, and will fight bitterly to defend their political space. Much of their base is militant and very poor. Yet in these elections, the FSLN ran a moderate campaign of conciliation with ex-contras and incentives for small farmers. It also enjoys support among some sectors of business.
These internal tensions have already produced one split and could create more divisions. But they could also open the door for new leadership: Ortega, who has lost twice, is not likely to run again. Reformers like Vilma Nuñez, a human-rights advocate and feminist who challenged him in the Sandinista primary this time, may find more space to move into the party's upper echelons.
Alemán's alliance, too, has its fault lines. Beyond his upscale core of businesspeople, he also has some following among the poor, who hope his aggressive salesmanship and connections in Miami and Washington will help to jump start the comatose economy.
"Nicaragua's political culture is one of charismatic strongmen," observed incoming foreign minister Emilio Álvarez Montalván. "Both Alemán and Ortega are caudillos," he said, whose emotional vision glues an anarchic society together.
Perhaps the biggest winner in these elections was Cardinal Miguel Obando y Bravo, used them to reassert the traditional power of the conservative church hierarchy as king-makers. Just days before the vote, while a ban on campaigning was in force, he invited Alemán and his vice-presidential candidate to help him celebrate mass. On national television, the Cardinal delivered a homily containing an obviously anti-Sandinista allegory, and had the Liberal candidate read a text which included the words "I am the chosen one."
Even some religious conservatives criticized this partisan flood of holy water. Retired Bishop Pablo Vega, a bitter opponent of the Sandinistas, said the Church should not be supporting a specific party.
Nevertheless, Nicaragua's Richelieu has emerged as the gray eminence behind the new government. The Ministries of Education and the Family will go to two right-wing Catholics who are committed to bringing more old-time religion into education and population policies. And the Cardinal's right-hand man, José Antonio Alvarado, has been named Minister of the Interior (Gobierno).
Alemán's opening political shot was a clumsy suggestion that all sitting judges resign so that he could replace them with his own appointees. The Supreme Court promptly rejected the idea as unconstitutional.
The President-elect then transposed into a less confrontational key, calling for a national agreement between all political forces to assure governability. This approach is more in tune with leaders across the political spectrum who underline the urgency of reconciling Nicaragua's deeply polarized society.
Rather than the traditional division of spoils between élites, said losing presidential candidate Alejandro Serrano, this accord should focus strategically on how to meet Nicaraguans' desperate needs. With most people lacking such basic necessities as water, light, housing, and sanitation, he said, "it's very difficult to consolidate a democracy."
One key to reconciliation will be the resolution of the ownership of contested properties. The Sandinistas confiscated the properties of some Nicaraguans, connected to the Somoza regime or simply afraid of the revolution, who fled to the U.S. after the overthrow of Somoza in 1979. Many wealthy emigrés now expect the Liberal Alliance to return their former holdings.
But hundreds of thousands of ordinary people now own a house or farm as a result of the expropriations. And many of the revolution's participants still consider the redistribution of land and capital a priority in a brutally unequal society. As one working-class man who got his home in the process put it," If they try to take it away from me, they'll be eating lead."
Property issues must be cleared up to attract investment, said one Alemán advisor. But capital alone will not solve Nicaragua's problems. Global finance and markets already dominate Latin America. Yet they have repeatedly failed to distribute wealth equitably or to foster sustainable development in the region. Instead, they have eroded the living standard of most citizens.
No political force, however, has come forward with a compelling alternative. "You can't talk about alternative economic models," said economist Néstor Avendaño, "because the international financial organisms only will finance one model, and there are no viable alternatives."
Ironically, Alemán himself claims to reject the classic liberal economic model. "I believe in private property," he said, "but I believe it must serve a social function. Manchesterian liberalism no longer has a place here." Yet when he gets down to brass tacks, Alemán's economic program begins to look pretty much like the updated social Darwinism preached by the International Monetary Fund: shred the social safety net, export and court foreign investors.
"First we need to transform our agriculture into agribusiness, to create jobs," he proposed. He also plans to prioritize tourism and expand the maquila (export assembly) sector to take advantage of Nicaragua's cheap labor.
Right on cue, the U.S. government's Export-Import Bank announced days after the elections that it would open a Nicaragua office. The Bank will finance U.S. exports to the private sector, offering low-interest loans mainly to finance the importation into Nicaragua of machinery, equipment, and finished consumer goods. This could help increase the productivity of agriculture and produce more export earnings for Nicaragua, said Aníbal Mayorga, director of the Association of Producers of Non-Traditional Products.
Alemán's core constituency, however, is more concerned with getting its old wealth back. And even given the best intentions, a 50-percent budget deficit and a huge international debt will leave paltry resources to meet the health, education, or housing needs of the 70 percent of Nicaraguans who live on the edge.
If current trends persist, said economist Xabier Gorostiaga, Central America could become "an ungovernable mix of Taiwanized enclaves and Somalicized regions." This "two-speed society" would trap most women, children, peasants and indigenous people in zones of penury and "social disintegration." In the midst of this "low-intensity chaos," elites and a small middle class would barricade themselves into a few modernized havens of commerce based on free trade and cheap labor, besieged by the crime and desperation outside.
To avoid this fate, Gorostiaga said, a new social contract must include all the region's people. Small and medium farmers must be encouraged to achieve food self-sufficiency and find new agricultural exports. Central American economies must be integrated, transnational services developed, and biodiversity explored as a basis for biotechnology, pharmaceuticals and ecotourism.
The country is well on the way to Gorostiaga's dystopia. While supermarket shelves are now full, malnutrition is growing visibly. Small waves, like the tripling of the price of beans over the past year and consequent reduction in protein intake, are swamping many lifeboats. The legions of barefoot kids washing windshields at traffic lights and working girls outside hotels and nightclubs are only the most visible symptoms of receding hopes for a decent life.
"Nation of furious destiny," poet Giaconda Belli called Nicaragua. Despite the demands of international markets for stability and yearning of nearly everyone for reconciliation, the elections have left the country severely polarized. Slaking that fury will require political maturity, economic ingenuity, and the will to help the majority allay its gut-twisting hungers.
Peter Costantini wrote about the 1996 Nicaraguan elections for MSNBC News. He previously co-led an observer delegation to the Nicaraguan elections of 1990 for Northwest-Nicaragua Electoral Watch and taught at the National Engineering University in Managua in 1986. He has also covered elections in Mexico and Haiti, and is Seattle correspondent for Inter Press Service, an international newswire based in Rome.
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