Disaffected Sandinistas say Daniel Ortega has become a dictator

The article "Disaffected Sandinistas say Daniel Ortega has become a dictator" in The Times on July 20, 2009 reported:

As the red-and-black flag of the Sandinistas flew high over Managua yesterday in celebration of the 30th anniversary of the Nicaraguan revolution, Daniel Ortega claimed that the US would once again try to invade the Central American nation.

Addressing thousands of supporters in the Plaza de Fe, President Ortega said that America had orchestrated the recent coup in Honduras and planned to turn Colombia into “an occupied country”, filling it with military bases from which to threaten leftist governments in the region.

“The US is filling Colombia with military bases to threaten all our brothers in Latin America, to threaten the Bolivarian revolution [in Venezuela] . . . to destroy the fight the people of Latin America are bringing,” he said. “They are going to try and invade Nicaragua. Come and try to invade Nicaragua! Come and try and defeat this people! But we will never be defeated.”

The faithful had been arriving in Managua for days to celebrate the victory over the dictator Anastasio Somoza. But 15 minutes after the man known as “Comandante Daniel” began to speak, the crowd began to thin noticeably. When The Times left the plaza at the end of his speech, only the most fervent remained, the waiting buses already filled with people.

For many Sandinistas President Ortega’s 21st-century makeover has not been able to mask the failures of the movement that once promised so much. Nicaragua suffers from extreme poverty, so much so that the Government announced before the anniversary a celebration of “austerity” and attached the number 30 to last year’s Christmas lights for the festivities.

Many leading Sandinistas stayed away, having long since deserted President Ortega. They accuse him of abandoning the principles of the revolution in favour of pursuing personal power.

Carlos Fernando Chamorro, a former editor of the Sandinista party newspaper Barricada, is one of many one-time allies who accuse Mr Ortega of pillaging public funds, oppressing critics and stealing elections as, they say, he comes to resemble the dictators he once despised.

Mr Chamorro, a leading journalist, says that he was accused of being a drug trafficker and a robber of peasant lands, and last year the Government launched a money-laundering inquiry against him even though prosecutors admitted that they had no evidence.

“It is a message ... that those who try and enter on to this ground of investigation of power will find serious consequences,” he told The Times. “Ortega is a revolutionary leader who became a traditional caudillo.”

Other dissidents have been accused of being traitors and CIA agents — a dangerous label in a country still menaced by the memory of the US-backed Contras. Enrique Sáenz, the president of the breakaway Sandinista Renovation Movement, has seen his car set alight by Ortega supporters, and party buildings attacked. “They treat us like enemies,” he told The Times.

Nonetheless, Mr Ortega retains a hard core of supporters buoyed by social programmes. Critics complain the programmes are accessible only to those who sign up as militantes of the Sandinista National Liberation Front, but to the faithful this is of little concern.

José Leopoldo Rodríguez, 65, a former farm labourer from Santo Domingo, said that the President had done for impoverished Nicaraguans what no other government had. “Is it a dictatorship? Maybe. But now it’s a dictatorship of the poor, not of the rich.”

Nicaragua's leftist president calls for re-election

According to "Nicaragua's leftist president calls for re-election":

MANAGUA, July 19 (Reuters) - Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega, a former guerrilla fighter, said on Sunday his country should extend presidential term limits after neighboring Honduras toppled its leftist president in a coup over the same issue.

Ortega, a U.S. foe during the Cold War, first ruled Nicaragua after taking power in a 1979 Marxist revolution.

After his Sandinista party was voted out of power in 1990, the opposition banned re-election in the 1995 constitution, a clause Ortega has called 'unjust.'

'Congressman are re-elected all the time. Mayors are not allowed to be re-elected. If we are going to be just and fair, re-election should be allowed for all (public officials),' Ortega said in front of thousands of supporters waving flags to celebrate the 30-year anniversary of the revolution.

A call to overhaul the constitution could raise alarm bells in the region already reeling from the crisis in Honduras where President Manuel Zelaya, an Ortega ally, was pushed into exile after he moved to reform laws to allow re-election.

The army whisked Zelaya out of the country on a military plane on June 28, following orders from the Supreme Court who said his bid to change the constitution was illegal. The interim government quickly installed after Zelaya's ouster has sworn to arrest him if he returns to Honduras.

Both Ortega and Zelaya are close to Venezuela's self-styled socialist leader Hugo Chavez, a relentless critic of the United States who has been in power for 10 years and vows to rule for decades.

The specter of a Chavez-style government in Honduras in part sparked the coup leaders to move against Zelaya.

Ortega ruled Nicaragua for 11 years as head of the Sandinista's revolutionary government until he was voted out. He returned to power in 2007 but presidents are barred from running consecutively or serving more than two terms.

Ortega would need a majority in Congress to support a measure to change the constitution, something he does not now have and critics say an attempt to have himself elected again would squash the political opposition.

Nicaragua's Revolutionary Legacy

According to the July 19, 2009 BBC News story "Nicaragua's revolutionary legacy" by Stephen Gibbs:

Thirty years on, Esperanza Cisneros is as much a believer as ever.

Her small Managua home seems like a shrine to the Sandinista Revolution. Its walls are adorned with political slogans.

A bicycle in the front porch has two black and red flags flying from the handlebars. Patriotic music blasts from the CD player.

But her enthusiasm is balanced with pain.

Like thousands of Nicaraguan mothers she lost a son to this country's violent political upheaval.

"A lot of blood was spilt", she says, "but now we have a government working hard for the people."

In 1979, almost the entire population of Nicaragua agreed with her.

The ouster of the dynastic dictator Anastasio Somoza was seen as a victory of hope over repression.

For as long as most Nicaraguans could remember, the Somoza ruling family had held a feudal grip on the country. The country's police force was notorious for its liberal use of torture.

By the time the Sandinistas, who took their name from their murdered historical hero Agustin Sandino, rolled into Managua, they were feted as liberators.

Their leader, a young man called Daniel Ortega, was seen as the new incarnation of Sandino.

'Revolution over'

But within months the mood changed. Many deserted Ortega, viewing his style of government as authoritarian and proto-communist.

A new rebellion began. It was stoked by foreign interests.

The Soviets backed the Sandinistas. The United States, fearing communism in its back yard, backed the counter-revolutionaries or "contras".

Overall, 50,000 lives were lost in the revolution and ensuing war, before a truce was declared in 1987.

That is more than 1% of the population. The equivalent of three million Americans.

Now Mr Ortega is back in power again, after winning the 2006 presidential election.

He says he has changed his colours, and that his administration is about reconciliation.

His government includes some of his old foes from the civil war days. An alliance has also been formed with the Roman Catholic Church.

As an apparent symbol of a softer, more inclusive form of rule, propaganda posters across the country are now pink, rather than the traditional red and black of the Sandinistas.

“ This leadership is not revolutionary at all ” -- Erik Flakoll

Some suggest the revolution is well and truly over.

Erik Flakoll, an American martial arts expert, was one of thousands of foreign idealists who came to Nicaragua in the 1970s and 80s to support something they believed in.

Months after arriving in 1980 he found himself recruited as a bodyguard to the senior Sandinista leaders.

His photo album shows him a as a young man in combat fatigues travelling the world with the new heroes of the eastern bloc.

"The uniform is from East Germany" he points out, with a smile.

Now he sees the men he once worked for as a sordid new elite, running a new oligarchy, in complete betrayal of their professed ideals.

"This leadership is not revolutionary at all," he says. "I do not know how history will determine who is the greatest thief. Is it Somoza... or will it be Daniel Ortega?

Grinding poverty

Such allegations are dismissed as absurd by Eden Pastora, aka Comandante Cero, as we talk in his office a few days before the 30th anniversary.

The room is stacked full of guns, ammunition and revolutionary memorabilia.

The silver haired ex-commander is something of a legend in revolutionary history. With 19 comrades he stormed the Nicaraguan congress in 1978, in a spectacular publicity boost for the Sandinista movement.

He has since had his differences with the Ortega leadership, but now he appears back on side.

"Everybody has heard the stories" he says. "That Daniel was funded by Gaddafi, $100,000 a month…that his brother, the head of the army was given $50,000.

"It's not true. I have been to his house. The ceiling is falling to bits. There are cobwebs everywhere. If it were true the people would not have voted for him".

He points to the achievements of the Ortega governments, from literacy campaigns to housing projects.

But most Nicaraguans have other priorities than judging whether the Sandinista revolution has been a success, or a fraud.

Grinding poverty is daily life for half the population. Unemployment in many areas is around 80%.

La Chureca rubbish dump on the outskirts of the city is home for hundreds of families, who somehow survive picking through the putrid garbage of their marginally more fortunate neighbours.

It is a place where ideology seems irrelevant.

I ask one man, stooped over a pile of plastic bags, what he thinks of his government.

"Things just seem to get worse", he says.

Nicaragua's Sandinista dissidents turn against ‘despot’ Ortega

According to "Nicaragua's Sandinista dissidents turn against ‘despot’ Ortega," a July 18, 2009 article in The Times, Hannah Strange reports:

Her achievements as a Sandinista guerrilla commander 30 years ago earned her a place in the pantheon of Nicaragua’s revolutionary heroes. But while thousands will flood the streets of Managua tomorrow to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the Sandinista victory over the dictator Anastasio Somoza, Dora Maria Téllez will stay away.

Ms Téllez is one of a growing number of Sandinistas who have broken with the government of Daniel Ortega as, they say, he completes his transformation from revolutionary to “caudillo” — one of the Latin American despots he once so despised.

“We are nearing a dictatorship,” Ms Téllez told The Times. “He is concentrating power, buying officials, eliminating institutions, creating the conditions to advance his own authoritarian project.All that he needs now is to remain in power,” she said in a reference to Mr Ortega’s plans for constitutional reform allowing him to stand for re-election when his term expires. “He needs only parliamentary approval to do so,” she noted, adding: “He doesn’t have the votes yet, but he is close. And he will buy the ones he needs.”

Nor would diminishing support be an obstacle to his re-election, Ms Téllez said. “He stole the elections in 2008. You have to presume that he would steal them again in 2011.” Dissident Sandinistas were barred, along with other political opponents, from standing in the 2008 congressional elections, widely denounced as fraudulent. Ms Téllez, the founder of the breakaway Sandinista Renovation Movement, mounted a hunger strike until doctors’ warnings forced her to call it off after 12 days.

As the head of the Sandinista Army’s Western Command, Ms Téllez led the brigade that took León, the first city to fall to the Sandinistas. She was “Commander Two” in the 1978 storming of the National Palace, seen as a pivotal moment in the overthrow of the Somoza regime.

Now she says she is regularly subjected to intimidation by the Government and marked out as fair game for militant supporters. On Sunday “we will have our own celebrations,” she said. “Daniel Ortega has appropriated the legacy of the Sandinista Revolution and abandoned its principles.”

Sandinistas celebrate 30th anniversary of revolution

According to "Sandinistas celebrate 30th anniversary of revolution," a July 18, 2009 article in Earth Times:

Managua - With the promise of filling the largest square in Managua, the government of Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega is getting ready to celebrate Sunday the 30th anniversary of the fall of General Anastasio Somoza, which marked the triumph of the Sandinista revolution. Supporters of Ortega and the Sandinista Front will gather at Plaza de la Fe, by the boardwalk on Xolotlan lake in Managua, where the late pope John Paul II said mass in 1996. Organizers expect tens of thousands of people, and more than 3,000 police officers were to be deployed to maintain order.

Ironically, the celebrations come as the opposition accuses Sandinista leader Ortega - who lost power in 1990 but returned 17 years later - of promoting "a new family dictatorship" in Nicaragua, currently the second-poorest country in Latin America.

The Sandinistas gained strength in the 1970s to become a force to reckon with and a major grouping in the effort to bring down Somoza's openly corrupt regime. On July 17, 1979, the dictator finally acknowledged his defeat and went into exile.

Two days later the Marxist Sandinistas took power but divisions with their allies soon emerged.

At the same time, former Somoza supporters started organizing themselves with US assistance into what were to become the Contras. Their guerrilla effort to overthrow the Sandinista regime became a full-scale civil war that left some 50,000 dead and further impoverished and weakened an already poor and war-ravaged country.

The two sides were eventually to negotiate and elections in 1990 saw the Sandinistas lose power to Violeta Chamorro, the candidate of an opposition coalition. Ortega was defeated twice in his effort to return to the presidency, but finally managed in 2007.

As the Sandinistas prepare to celebrate the 30th anniversary of their rise to power, former commanders of the guerrilla group it once was are debating whether the Sandinista revolution is still alive, or whether it ended when Chamorro's win launched 17 years of right-wing governments in Nicaragua.

For writer Sergio Ramirez, former vice president in the 1985-1990 Sandinista government, Ortega is only one of many failed leaders in Nicaraguan history.

"He wasted the opportunity that history put in his hands, to use his leadership to transform Nicaragua socially and to provide it with better democratic institutions," he said in an interview with the German Press Agency dpa.

"What there is now is a populist government with a conduct that is confusing in many aspects, that has a demagogic left-wing discourse and a right-wing behaviour in economic policy," Ramirez said.

His opinion is shared by Victor Tirado, one of the nine Sandinista commanders of the 1980s and a dissident since 1994.
"The revolution ended in 1990 because the election dealt us a fatal blow, and the things we managed to do collapsed with the government of Mrs Violeta," Tirado told a Nicaraguan daily.

Former Sandinista commander Tomas Borge, currently Nicaragua's ambassador to Peru, noted that the revolution "gave back dignity to the people" and "showed the world that a small country could defend itself."

Although he remains an unconditional friend of Ortega's, Borge admitted that the Sandinistas reached power "with an aura of sanctity" and were too far-removed from the people who suffered a severe economic crisis and a war that left thousands dead.

"There was a degree of arrogance in us leading members of the (Sandinista) Front, who had so much power. People looked at us as if we were kings, and we behaved like kings. We were not always consistent with the historic responsibility we had with the revolution," Borge said.

Carmen Rios

Carmen Rios

Fundación Luciérnaga

Fundación Luciérnaga