Nicaraguan solidarity : making the US ambassador redundant?
Is there any significant difference between the political intervention
of the North American solidarity movement in Nicaragua and that of the
US government's ambassador? The recent deal on fuel and fertilizer
between the Association of Nicaraguan Municipalities and the Venezuelan
authorities has helped everyone concerned about Nicaragua by clarifying
political allegiances. As might be expected, the Nicaraguan social
democrats' flagship newspaper El Nuevo Diario covered the deal in a
misleading, dismissive way.
Less expected was a factually mistaken account from the main US
solidarity organization Nicanet in one of its information bulletins.
The managerial solidarity class in North America and elsewhere needs to
review what is leading them to behave similarly to the US ambassador to
Nicaragua. They even use similar vocabulary. Several elements are
tangled up in the matter.
The inevitability of taking sides is there and the inescapable criteria
of class on which those choices tend to get made. Also there is the
relation between solidarity-based interventions and their impact on
local politics. In Nicaragua, one wonders at the convergence between
comment from foreign solidarity and peace activists and poor reporting
by local social-democrat media with a very clear anti-FSLN bias.
Intervention - hubbub and diversion
Currently, the issue of intervention looms large as a result of US
ambassador Trivelli's flamboyant violation of diplomatic rules.(1) The
attention devoted to Trivelli's behaviour is beside the point. Or
perhaps it is the point. The US representative in Nicaragua is duty
bound to intervene in local politics because that is US government
policy and has been ever since President Monroe's declaration back in
the 19th Century. Focusing on Trivelli's intervention is largely
irrelevant. Demanding an end to it is delusional.
Will the intervention be any better or more acceptable because it
happens in private? Are we to suppose that the diplomats of other NATO
countries are not having quiet but purposeful conversations with
Nicaraguan political power-brokers out of the public eye? Obviously,
intervention is going on all the time. It may be important to demand
appropriate behaviour from Trivelli, but the point at issue - whether
any variety of intervention is acceptable and if so what kind - tends
to get lost.
AMUNIC and the Venezuela cooperation agreement
The Venezuela-AMUNIC cooperation deal is a good place to look at these
matters. On April 23rd the Bolivarian News Agency reported(2)
that President Chavez had announced the imminent signing of various
agreements with 151 Nicaraguan municipal authorities. The report said
that Dionisio Marenco, FSLN mayor of Managua, would represent the
Association of Nicaraguan Municipalities at the signing. On April 24th,
El Nuevo Diario in a report(3) on Daniel Ortega's meeting with
President Chavez, mentioned that 51 local authorities would sign the
agreements. Only a careful reader would have noted later in the same
report that the deal would benefit all the more than 150 Nicaraguan
local authorities regardless of political affiliation.
In an April 26th report (4) El Nuevo Diario reported the signing of the
agreements, mentioning that 53 mayors took part. Shortly afterwards
Nicanet sent out the following in a report on the deal in its April
25th hotline "On April 22 FSLN presidential candidate Daniel Ortega and
Managua's Sandinista Mayor Dionisio Marenco met in Venezuela with
President Hugo Chavez and the Venezuelan state oil company PDVSA.
PDVSA will sell oil to the Nicaraguan Association of Municipalities
(AMUNIC), an association of the 51 Nicaraguan municipal governments
controlled by the FSLN/Convergencia. The oil will be sold to the
municipalities at market rate, but 40% of the price can be paid over 25
years. This will allow municipalities to sell lower priced
gasoline to transportation cooperatives providing a solution,
especially in Managua, to the problem that bus owners can't break even
at the current fare and Managua workers and students can't afford an
increase."
So another canard, damaging to both the FSLN and to the Venezuelan
government, enters the Nicaraguan election rumour-mill. One can
predict the propaganda line: "Venezuela intervenes in the Nicaraguan
elections by only helping FSLN municipalities - look, even Nicanet says
so". El Nuevo Diario can truthfully say it did not misreport the facts.
The careless editors at Nicanet, who almost certainly relied on reports
like those in El Nuevo Diario, messed up.
AMUNIC represents over 150 municipal authorities. The FSLN controls 85
of them. The cooperation agreements were signed by 53 municipal
representatives some of whom were from Nicaragua's other political
parties, as well as from the FSLN. The cooperation agreements will
benefit all the municipal authorities who are AMUNIC members regardless
of political affiliation. The Nicanet report - which may have changed
on their web site by the time this article appears since the error is
so egregious - suggested that only FSLN municipalities will benefit
from the cooperation agreement, which is not the case. This silly
mistake highlights the tendency of foreign solidarity groups to
misrepresent FSLN initiatives in accordance with the line of the FSLN's
local social democrat enemies like Herty Lewites and his supporters.
Inaccuracies and wishful thinking
An article last year by Joe DeRaymond(5) is a another useful example of
the kind of inaccuracies and wishful thinking about Nicaragua that
create confusion, deliberately or otherwise. Writing about the
presidential elections in 2001, DeRaymond notes, "Daniel lost
despite an overwhelming victory by the FSLN in the municipal elections
of 2000." But there was no overwhelming victory in the municipal
elections in 2000. The FSLN barely won a third of Nicaragua's
municipalities.
DeRaymond goes on to observe in the same article of May 2005, "In March
of this year, the Sandinistas again won the municipal elections in
overwhelming fashion." But the municipal elections were in November of
2004 and the FSLN-Convergencia won 85 municipalities - a massive
advance on the performance in 2000. DeRaymond pretends that the FSLN
under Daniel Ortega made no electoral progress between 2000 and 2004.
He does this because his false assertion backs up the inaccurate
argument he seeks to advance, an argument that just happens to be one
put about by the enemies of the FSLN.
When one looks for what kind of politics North American solidarity
activists want, one gets a sobering prequel to the intervention of US
ambassador Paul Trivelli. In his article DeRaymond quotes approvingly a
message from Nicanet in 2000 that states, "We look forward to the day
when the entire leadership and grassroots base of the FSLN again
provide strong, idealistic leadership for that struggle." which seems
vague but unobjectionable.
But in the meantime, Nicanet said in that 2000 message, "The Nicaragua
Network remains in solidarity with the most democratic sectors of the
Sandinista movement that are working to improve the lives of
Nicaragua's poor and oppressed. We recognize that these Sandinistas can
be found within the Sandinista party structures and outside them and
even (in a few cases) within the party leadership."
But "solidarity with the most democratic sectors" is uncomfortably like
what US ambassador Paul Trivelli has been saying about Nicaraguan
politics too. For saying it he has been attacked by North American
solidarity activists. In fact, they both claim the right to decide who
are the "democratic" sectors and who are not. The sheer contempt this
implies for the wishes of the Nicaraguan people is astonishing.
Trivelli and Nicanet and DeRaymond seem to want us to believe that the
FSLN and the Liberal Constitutional Party are Nicaragua's largest
parties by accident.
They want us to believe that the sandinista dissidents who have walked
away from the FSLN are somehow more "democratic" than outstanding
Nicaraguan politicans from other parties like Julia Mena, Jaime
Morales, Agustin Jarquin and Miriam Arguello, among many others. This
is what Paul Trivelli wants people to think too. All those individuals
work closely with Daniel Ortega in the FSLN/Convergencia alliance. This
uncomfortable fact completely undermines dissident sandinista claims,
retailed repeatedly by Nicanet and others, that Daniel Ortega is an
especially tyrannical politician.
Puffing Herty Lewites
Back in May last year DeRaymond put clearly the point of view of North
American solidarity activists who support the sandinista dissidents
grouped around Herty Lewites. It may be worth quoting what he wrote at
length:
"The current struggle within the FSLN is more than a struggle between
Herty Lewites and Daniel Ortega. It is about a party re-establishing
its ability to be the party of the poor majority, the people most
affected by the brutality of the neo-liberal economic system. Lewites
has become a threat to Ortega not because he has the support of the US,
but because the bases of the FSLN and the majority of people of
Nicaragua want change, and Ortega does not offer it. If Lewites has the
support of the United States Ambassador as Tony Solo states in his
recent Counterpunch article, "Nicaragua on a Dollar a Day, Forever", I
believe it is only because the Ambassador knows this will hurt Lewites
in the eyes of Nicaraguans. As an FSLN candidate who will carry through
with a Sandinista program, it would be a different story, I believe. We
don't yet know what program Herty Lewites would propose for Nicaragua,
for example, whether he would support or oppose the neo-liberal
policies that have been ruinous for Nicaragua's poor. But he deserves a
chance to present his program to the people in the type of party
primary that the Danielistas have now cancelled."
Ok then. Here we are a year on in. Lewites programme? No one knows.
Would his foreign policy support Cuba and Venezuela? Don't know. What's
his energy policy to deal with soaring oil prices? Don't know. What's
his agricultural policy? No one can tell you. Health? Education? Um,
sorry, no one knows.
When the crucial vote came in Nicaragua's legislature on the Central
American Free Trade Agreement Lewites refused to clarify his position.
Why? Most likely because he supported CAFTA but didn't want to say.
When asked about CAFTA just before that decisive vote, Lewites
supporters like Victor Tirado and Monica Baltodano refused to answer
questions on the issue, as did Lewites himself.
What do we know about Lewites? We know he was expelled unanimously from
the FSLN by an assembly of the party's members. We know he has had
several meetings with ambassador Trivelli, and other leading US
government representatives. We know he has had lengthy discussions with
Eduardo Montealegre, the preferred candidate of the Nicaraguan
oligarchy and the US embassy.
We know he waited until it was very clear that majority opinion was
hostile to the gross interventionist behaviour of ambassador Trivelli
before commenting critically in the mildest possible terms. We know he
loses no opportunity to make personal attacks on Daniel Ortega. It
could not be clearer that Lewites is an opportunist deliberately
reserving his positions on the entire range of policy issues so as not
to alienate some group whose support he needs.
This, surely is the very definition of an opportunist. And yet who is
it that the North American solidarity activists tag "opportunist"?
Obviously, Daniel Ortega. Brynne Keith-Jennings suggests in the article
"The Meddlesome Ambassador Trivelli" already referenced, "Although
Ortega's rhetoric frequently challenges the role of the US in
Nicaragua, in recent years, he has proven to be more a political
opportunist than an ideologue or potential threat to the United States.
He has not said that his government would renege on current IMF loans
or otherwise alter the US-supported neoliberal reforms that the US
define as "sensible economic policies". Regardless, it should be the
Nicaraguan people, not U.S. policymakers, who decide whether or not he
deserves a second term in office."
Indeed. And this is yet another example of the counterfactual
determination of North American solidarity activists to rubbish the
FSLN and Ortega. The recent deal with Venezuela is a clear example of
the progressive, anti-neoliberal domestic and foreign political and
economic policies of the FSLN and very much in opposition to US
government economic dictates for countries like Nicaragua. Ortega and
the FSLN have consistently defended that party's commitment to
anti-imperialism, political pluralism and a mixed economy.
This is in very sharp contrast with Herty Lewites studied refusal to
define a political programme. Likewise, Keith-Jennings and people who
argue similarly should explain in what sense the FSLN and Daniel Ortega
do not represent a potential threat to the imperialist regional agenda
of the United States government. Do they think so many leading members
and supporters of the Bush regime as well as the US ambassador devote
so much time, energy and resources to attacking the FSLN and Daniel
Ortega because they have nothing better to do? Do they think the
enduring relationship between Ortega and Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez
is mere "rhetoric"?
It is self-evident that as solidarity activists - however poor we may
be financially - we form a comfortable managerial class. We manage
valuable resources unavailable to the vast majority of Nicaraguans. The
natural alliances of our class are with the kind of people who are
grouped around Herty Lewites - mostly agreeable and articulate media
and NGO types. It is pleasant to think of ourselves as principled
idealists. But class will always out and we should be alert to that.
The gross errors of fact published by Nicanet and Joe DeRaymond,
trivial in themselves, point at best to lazy wishful thinking - at
worst to deliberate and determined political intervention against the
FSLN. So too does Brynne Keith-Jennings', counterfactual note about
FSLN economic policy. The fact that North American solidarity activists
seem to be at one with ambassador Paul Trivelli in promoting Herty
Lewites as an appropriate "democratic" presidential candidate against
Daniel Ortega gives plenty of pause for thought. It is not unfair to
ask what difference there is between their clear anti-FSLN political
agenda and that of the US government.
NOTES
1. "The Meddlesome Ambassador Trivelli. Whose Democracy is the US
Supporting in Nicaragua?", Brynne Keith-Jennings Counterpunch April
22nd/23rd 2006
2. "Venezuela firmará convenios con 151 alcaldías de
Nicaragua el 25 de abril" Agencia Bolivariana de Noticias 23/04/2006
3. "“¿Qué pasó, Daniel? ¿Vamos a ganar?",
Cables combinadas, El Nuevo Diario 24/04/0206
4. "PDVSA y 53 alcaldes forman Alba Petróleos de Nicaragua",
Cables combinadas. El Nuevo Diario 26/04/2006
5. "Autumn of the Revolutionary. Another Look at Daneil Ortega and the
Sandinista Struggle", Joe DeRaymond, Counterpunch may7th/8th 2005