NICARAGUA: Zoellick brings US into electoral process
In Washington's most overt intervention in a Latin American electoral process since 1946, US Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick went to Nicaragua to throw his country's weight behind what he called the 'third way' - represented by Eduardo Montealegre and Herty Lewites - and against the Sandinistas led by Daniel Ortega and the Liberals led by Arnoldo Alemán.
Zoellick turned up in Managua on 4 October accompanied by the State Department's new number-one Western Hemisphere official, Tom Shannon. At a press conference attended by President Enrique Bolaños he said that Nicaragua's 'promising future' was in danger: 'This promising future is threatened. It's threatened by a creeping coup. It's threatened by corruption, it's threatened by a clique of caudillos. This is the way of the corrupt "Pacto". The people of Nicaragua seem to recognise the choice. The "Movimiento" has put tens of thousands of people in the streets. The polls show that the people of Nicaragua want democracy, want opportunity, want development.'
'I am heartened,' he said, 'to see that there's a Third Way movement in Nicaragua, and I'm going to meet some of the leaders of that movement [...] because it is vital that my country and others support fair and free elections in Nicaragua [...] I'm going to be seeing some individuals, Mr Montealegre, Mr Alvarado, who are setting a different course. Some of them have been associated with the Liberal Party in the past. That's the choice of people in the Liberal Party that they'll be making over the course of the next months. Similarly, I'm going to see Mr Lewites, who has broken with some of the old leaders of the Sandinistas about the "Pacto", because he recognises that it's corrupt.' Zoellick also announced that the US was granting US$4.5m 'to support the National Democratic Institute, the International Republican Institute, to work with the OAS and other organisations to make sure that these elections are free and fair'.
Zoellick contrived to give the impression that Nicaragua would be ostracised and cut off from US aid if either of the Pacto parties were to win the elections next year - though a careful examination of his statements reveals that these threats referred only to the possibility that the opposition should 'remove a democratically elected President from power'. His refrain was that Nicaragua faced a threat to the 'legitimate, democratically elected' Bolaños government, without making any reference to the fact that the challenge comes from a legislature which is equally legitimate and democratically elected.
'I want to be frank,' said Zoellick, 'there's a corrupt pact by Alemán and Ortega, and that is Nicaragua's past. It's not its future. That's a path that will lead Nicaragua to lose the Millennium Challenge Account assistance, to lose the opportunity of CAFTA, to lose the opportunities of investment, to lose the opportunities of integration with your neighbours, and of course, as a result, those that are most poor, most hurt, will be the poor of Nicaragua who desperately need an opportunity to get a leg up and to have a future of hope.'
In its press release on Zoellick's visit, the State Department chose to quote from the US press to make its case. It said: 'The Washington Post, in an editorial published October 3, recalled Ortega's "ruinous attempt to install a Marxist dictatorship" in Nicaragua 15 years ago and noted that "allegations of corruption and child molestation" continue to haunt Ortega. But neither Ortega's two electoral defeats in Nicaragua, nor his "single-digit rating in opinion polls", has prevented him from insinuating himself into Nicaragua's political process, the Post said. "Thanks to the weakness of the country's new democratic institutions, Mr Ortega is close to regaining power and to broadening the Latin alliance of undemocratic states now composed [of] Cuba and Venezuela".'
The Partido Liberal Constitucionalista (PLC) issued a communiqué on 5 October castigating Zoellick's statements as 'offensive, unjust and obfuscated [...], a clear humiliation and outrage by a foreign power determined to interfere and exercise decisive influence on the destinies [of Nicaragua].' Two days later US ambassador Paul Trivelli was predicting, however, that Zoellick's message would begin to show results in the short term. 'We will continue,' he said, 'trying to push, together with the OAS and the donors, for the democratic forces to unite before the elections.' Actually, at least one response had already taken place. On 6 October two PLC congressmen, Carlos Noguera and David Castillo, held a meeting with Eduardo Montealegre, the Liberal dissident hailed by Zoellick as representative of the 'third way', to discuss the possibility of uniting all 'democratic forces' against the Sandinistas.
The OAS track
On 7 October the president of the national assembly, René Núñez, delivered to OAS envoy Dante Caputo a letter taking up the proposal made by OAS Secretary-General José Miguel Insulza for a 'broad dialogue', with the assurance that the legislature was willing to enter such a dialogue without any conditions. This was followed by a plea to President Bolaños from the umbrella business association, the Consejo Superior de la Empresa Privada (Cosep), for him to call urgently a non-exclusive broad dialogue. Bolaños, who had not yet responded to Insulza's urging, said he would be giving a 'serious answer' to Cosep's plea. Caputo said: 'There are conditions for negotiation which I hope will become concrete; I have reasonable expectations that this will happen.'
- Belligerence grows towards Costa Rica
President Enrique Bolaños has continued to raise the temperature on the dispute with Costa Rica over navigation on the San Juan river [WR-05-39]. On 5 October, after touring the troops stationed along the waterway, he announced: 'Costa Rica has insisted that they have the right to navigate the river armed to supply their police, from one end to the other of the stretch where they enjoy the right to navigate. Nicaragua will never recognise nor permit that [...] We hope that Costa Rica will keep calm, as we are.'
In an interview with the Costa Rican newspaper La Nación Bolaños said that the country's recourse to the International Court of Justice 'breaks the traditional harmony between the two nations somewhat'.
The Costa Rican government has so far made no movement to match the military mobilisation on the Nicaraguan side. Nicaragua's national assembly announced on 6 October that it would approve an 'emergency' increase in the 2006 defence budget so that the army can establish permanent vigilance on the San Juan river. No figure was mentioned but assembly president René Núñez said it would be substantial.
The newspaper La Prensa contributed to the prevailing atmosphere by underlining that Costa Rica's security budget is the second-biggest in Central America (after Guatemala's defence budget). Its 2006 budget envisages an appropriation of US$100m, whereas Nicaragua's 2005 budget only allocated US$33m for defence.