|
|
|
 Americas & Beyond | June 2008 
Nicaragua: Hard Times for Ortega
 José Adán Silva - Inter Press Service
go to original
| | Nicaragua's President Daniel Ortega waves during his arrival at the presidential house in Tegucigalpa, June 2, 2008. (Reuters/Edgard Garrido) | | |
Managua - Economic problems and persistent poverty, along with his unconditional support of Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez and expressions of sympathy towards Colombia’s guerrillas, have plunged Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega’s approval ratings to a new low, analysts say.
The latest poll published by the non-governmental Nicaraguan Foundation for Economic and Social Development (FUNDES) indicates that the number of people in this Central American country who say they feel poorer and more hopeless has increased since Ortega took office in January 2007.
Seven out of 10 respondents in a national sample of 1,600 people said they were pessimistic about the immediate future of the country because they thought their purchasing power would continue to shrink and inflation would be higher than in 2007, when it stood at 16.8 percent. Between January and April 2008, the inflation rate was 6.8 percent.
Ortega is blamed for these rising indicators, even though institutions like the World Bank and the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) have said the fight against poverty is hampered by the soaring oil prices and the food crisis due to market speculation and rising demand from China and India.
Roberto Courtney, the head of Ética y Transparencia, the local chapter of global anti-corruption watchdog Transparency International, told IPS that poor management of public funds by the government of the leftwing Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN), added to the constant barrage of criticism from the opposition, have increased people’s perception that the authorities are doing nothing to alleviate poverty.
Nicaragua has been one of the poorest countries in Latin America for decades.
"The government has admitted that it receives 520 million dollars a year in aid from Venezuela, but no one knows what is done with that money, and the president’s most visible social investment is in the huge signs with his photograph and the phrase ‘Rise up, poor of the earth!’" said Courtney.
Since last year, the opposition, civil society and private business sectors, and trade and transport organisations have been demanding that the government make public how it uses the funds it receives from abroad.
So far the state coffers have received 520 million dollars from the sale of Venezuelan oil products, which are being used to finance electricity generating plants and social projects such as Zero Hunger, Zero Usury, Streets for the People and Houses for the People, Ortega said in May.
According to the agreement with Venezuela, a binational company, Albanisa, is in charge of the sale of the 10 million barrels of oil a year that are supplied to Nicaragua.
Javier Meléndez, the head of the non-governmental Institute for Strategic Studies and Public Policies, said Ortega appears to hold himself accountable only to Venezuelan President Chávez.
"Ortega doesn’t care that the whole country is clamouring for transparency. He seems interested only in keeping well in with Chávez," said Meléndez, emphasising Ortega’s close relationship with Caracas and the Bolivarian Alternative for the Peoples of the Americas (ALBA), an alliance that also includes Bolivia and Cuba.
In Meléndez’s view, that relationship has had a negative effect on Ortega’s image, both at home and abroad.
In a poll by the firm M&R, published in mid-May by the conservative newspaper La Prensa, 11.8 percent of respondents said they "totally" supported Ortega, 20.4 percent said they partially backed him, and 64.5 percent said they did not support him at all.
Ortega was elected in 2006 with 38 percent of the vote, thanks to a reform of the electoral law reducing the proportion of votes required for outright election in the first round from 51 to 35 percent, achieved by means of an agreement with the present rightwing opposition.
According to Meléndez, Ortega’s drop in popularity, as reflected by the results of several polls, is due to the president’s actions on the international stage.
"This is because he has been tactless on the subject of poverty, in spite of his populist talk, and because of his actions in support of Venezuela and in defiance of the United States," said Meléndez.
There has recently been friction between the Nicaraguan government and Costa Rica, El Salvador, Mexico, Colombia, the United States and the European Union, among others, because it has supported ALBA rather than other kinds of free trade treaties and economic agreements with those countries, and because it has defended Iran’s right to have a nuclear energy programme.
In a regional Gallup poll published in March, Ortega had the lowest approval rating among Central American presidents, with just 20 percent support in his country.
By comparison, Óscar Arias of Costa Rica had the support of 64 percent of respondents, Álvaro Colom of Guatemala 49 percent, Antonio Saca of El Salvador 41 percent, Leonel Fernández of the Dominican Republic 40 percent, Martín Torrijos of Panama 33 percent, and Manuel Zelaya of Honduras 37 percent.
The Gallup poll was carried out before Ortega granted asylum to Mexican student Lucía Morett and two Colombians, Doris Torres Bohórquez, 21, and Martha Pérez Gutiérrez, 24, survivors of a Colombian armed forces attack on a Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) guerrilla camp in Ecuador on Mar.1.
Ortega was also the only Latin American president to publicly regret the Mar. 26 death of FARC founder and leader "Manuel Marulanda".
Speaking in Montevideo at the closing ceremony of the 14th Sao Paulo Forum, a gathering of the left in Latin America and the Caribbean, on the day the guerrilla leader’s death was confirmed, Ortega said "I say to our FARC brothers and sisters that we must carry on battling in order to achieve peace in Colombia," after extending his condolences to Marulanda’s family.
His statements drew harsh criticism from the opposition in Nicaragua.
Dora María Téllez, a social researcher and former FSLN commander in the 1979 revolution that toppled the Somoza dictatorship, told IPS that Ortega’s image is weakened by his "ineffectiveness" in dealing with social demands and his lack of prudence in international affairs.
"The commander not only makes serious mistakes in the international sphere, but here as well. He is still living in the Cold War era and doesn’t seem to have any civilian-style solutions," said Téllez, Ortega’s former comrade-in-arms and now a member of the breakaway Sandinistas in opposition.
An example of the ineffectiveness mentioned by Téllez was Ortega’s handling of the 12-day transport strike in May, and the protests over food prices.
The government "let time pass without showing its face, shopkeepers lost millions of dollars, and when at last it acted, it did so violently," she said, referring to the police clampdown on protesters blocking the streets.
The strike ended when Ortega promised the transport sector a rebate of 1.30 dollars per gallon on the price of gasoline, and said the government would review the subsidies paid to food producers.
Since the 2006 electoral campaign, Ortega has stood by his decision not to speak to the media, of which he is critical in general.
In his speeches, which he usually makes in public squares, he calls social organisations that question his policies "traitors" and the opposition "contras" - a reference to the U.S.-sponsored rightwing armed groups that waged war on his democratic government in the 1980s. |
| |
|
Vallarta Weddings
Tell a Friend
Site Map
Print this Page
Email Us