In Nicaragua, A Crucial Moment (RHC)

Via NY Transfer News * All the News That Doesn't Fit

Radio Habana Cuba Editorial, November 3, 2001
English translation by NY Transfer News

A CRUCIAL MOMENT FOR NICARAGUA

A little more a decade after losing power, the Sandinistas will
govern Nicaragua again if the National Convergence, the coalition
that they head, wins Sunday's general election.

In an unusually militant atmosphere, more than 2.8 million
Nicaraguans are eligible to vote for the president who will govern
from 2002 to 2007, as well as 90 deputies of the National Assembly
and 20 representatives to the the Central American Parliament
(Parlacen).

After an electoral campaign full of promises and accusations among
three presidential candidates, the latest polls favor the Sandinista
leader Daniel Ortega, and Enrique Bolaños, an official of the
Constitutional Liberal Party, over Alberto Saborio, candidate of the
Conservative Party, who is viewed as having very little chance in the
race.

For Ortega, who governed during the almost eleven years of the
Sandinista Revolution, this is his third campaign for the presidency,
after electoral losses in 1990 and 1996.

Bolaños, an agricultural engineer educated in the state of Missouri,
in the U.S., is running for the first time; he served as vice
president under the current president Arnaldo Aleman, a position he
gave up in order to run.

In declarations clearly designed to influence the voters, chancellor
Francisco Aguirre announced a supposed hardening of the political
position of the United States in relation to Nicaragua should the
Sandinistas win. Pointing to a resolution proposed in the US Congress
by three Senators -- two Republicans and one Democrat -- Aguirre said
that the North Americans greatly distrust Daniel Ortega. Ro sow fear,
the chancellor claimed that, if the Sandinistas return to power,
Washington will use international credit organizations to block
economic assistance to Nicaragua.

On Friday, the newspaper La Prensa published excerpts of the
resolution introduced by the ultra-reactionary Senator Jesse Helms
and co-sponsored by the Republican Mike deWine, and Bob Graham, a
Democrat, which sought to authorize President Bush to evaluate result
of the election and consequently to modify it.

The truth is that whether the Sandinistas or the Liberal
Constitutional party wins, the new government will face a country
submerged in poverty (more than 70% of the population survives with
less than a dollar a day), unemployment (53% of the labor force) and
corruption at all levels.

Poverty, evident in Manágua and in other cities, is extreme in the
countryside, where the crisis of the international price of coffee --
Nicaragua's major export -- and a lingering dought have worsened the
situation and forced thousands of people onto the street.

The dirty dealings of the authorities have placed Nicaragua among the
nations with the worst corruption in the world. It is enough to
remember the repeated accusations of the press against the current
chief of state, Arnoldo Alemán, for immeasurably increasing his
personal fortune.

In addition, whoever assumes power in January of 2002 will have to
face the challenge of a foreign debt of six billion dollars, on which
the interest payments alone swallow 40% of the country's total
revenue.

(c) 2001 Radio Habana Cuba, NY Transfer News. All rights reserved.
 
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