This past January, Arnoldo Alemán rolled into office as president with his now trademark arrogance and the assurance that he will be able to recast the Nicaraguan state, molding it to resemble, if not duplicate, the Somoza family dictatorship under which Alemán came of political age and consciousness and which to him continues to represent the glory days of recent Nicaraguan history. Only days before taking office, he effectively consolidated his power over both the legislative and judicial branches, and budgetary decisions made since January effectively crippled the electoral council, Nicaragua's fourth branch of state. Alemán, responding to criticisms of both his government's style and its content, claimed he had a mandate, flaunting what he held to be deep support for his new administration.
Yet, by late April, with the Alemán administration marking its first 100 days in office, the new government was emerging from a serious challenge in the form of a national protest by many of the country's popular sectors -- primarily, though not exclusively, Sandinista; many in Nicaragua's business community are angry and feel betrayed by Alemán as a result of his (partially successful) attempts to pass new tax legislation; the country's NGOs (non-governmental organizations) -- which design and implement millions of dollars' worth of development programs -- are organizing to respond to what they feel is a frontal assault to their autonomy; and the Nicaraguan women's movement, arguably the broadest of the country's grassroots movements, is uniting around plans to undermine the existing state-sponsored women's institution and impose a new structure, the Ministry of the Family.
Though it is true that 100 days is a very short period of time, clear tendencies have emerged in the government since January 10 and Alemán seems entirely committed to radically reshaping the Nicaraguan state, and to the extent possible, Nicaraguan society as well. While Alemán is the successor to Violeta Chamorro's administration, he has been chafing at the bit ever since the late 1980s to exact revenge on the FSLN and his government is perhaps best understood in that context -- that is, one of its key organizing principles is a vitriolic anti-Sandinista sentiment. The country is witnessing a concerted attempt by the state, and in this it is both backed and spurred on by the Catholic hierarchy, to reclaim ideological territory it feels it lost during the 1980s. The government and church talk frequently about what is in fact an evident crisis in values in Nicaragua today, and then lay the blame for that crisis exclusively on the revolution's door step. The message is, ultimately, a punitive one, with the Catholic hierarchy reinstated as the country's definitive moral standard. Along with this, some of the significant gains made during the revolution and actually even further consolidated under Violeta Chamorro's administration are being hotly contested in a wholesale move to silence civil society.
Others who find themselves on shaky footing are the thousands of former soldiers (from the Sandinista army, the Sandinista Ministry of Interior, and the contra forces) who received land as part of Violeta Chamorro's efforts to consolidate peace in the countryside. Just prior to the beginning of the national strike, when it was clear that other property issues were already reaching a crisis, Aleman added more fuel to the fire by announcing that he would rescind all agreements made by the Chamorro administration that extended land to the different former military groups.
A major property issue is titling, one linked closely to credit, as most people find it impossible to receive credit if they are unable to show legal titles to their land. No credit means that people cannot plant and thus will be unable to support their families. [The crucial planting season that begins with the May rains needs several weeks of preparation, and so the farmers who have been unable to get credit in recent months and weeks are already extremely disadvantaged, if not effectively paralyzed for the duration of this year's first agricultural cycle.]
Responding to the problem of credit, Alemán initially pledged to eliminate the so-called cobra -- an institution that many say weighs disproportionately on the small and medium producers, pressuring them to pay off their debts, while the large landowners (who have borrowed millions from Nicaraguan banks in recent years and seem to feel little compulsion to pay that money back were let off the hook. When it became clear that the cobra was still in effect, producers (many of whom supported Alemán) felt betrayed by him and went on to form the backbone of the mid-April protest, demanding credit and a 10-year moratorium on debt payments.
Nicaragua's urban areas are not exempt from serious property disputes, and while much press has been dedicated to the several handfuls of people who ended up living in fairly comfortable homes as a result of the so-called piñata, dozens of people have been evicted from modest dwellings. The Nicaraguan community movement, or Movimiento Comunal, has pledged to fight such evictions, and many of their activists felt pushed to the brink by mid-April.
In fact, the strike began peacefully on April 14. Much of Managua continued with business as usual, but key areas in the countryside ground to a virtual halt as people blocked roads with human barricades, rocks, and, distressingly, freshly-cut trees. CEPAD Executive Director Gilberto Aguirre called the protest "just," given that the government continues to impose laws that do nothing to stimulate production, at the same time as the rate of unemployment continues to grow.
Though Alemán and others downplayed the protest's strength, the weekly Confidencial reports that, behind the scenes, a series of phone calls between Alemán advisors Jaime Morales Carazo and Francisco Aguirre and former army chief Humberto Ortega were instrumental in leading to a dialogue.
Thus, in the end, after much public bluster and declarations that he would not dialogue with the FSLN, Alemán in fact entered into faceto-face, private negotiations with Daniel Ortega. While the strike involved sectors far beyond those who traditionally support the Sandinistas and seeing it as only a Sandinista effort would be mistaken, Alemán's decision to negotiate almost exclusively with the FSLN effectively continues the polarization that paralyzes the country's political arena. Of course, that is in Alemán's interest, precisely because broader key sectors of civil society are excluded. A newspaper editorial by Gioconda Belli, a longtime Sandinista figure who supported the MRS in its split from the FSLN, argued that the dialogue should be televised, so that everyone really knows what is happening, instead of trying to glean fragments of information by observing what the key players do each time they emerge from behind the closed doors.
Two key manifestations of the attack against the NGOs (and thus against civil society in a larger sense) are the attempts to reform Law 147 and the plans to create the Ministry of the Family. The reforms to Law 147 are a clear attempt to control the NGOs and their resources, as they would require groups to answer to the government, and, some fear, even force the NGOs to pay a certain percentage of all income to the government.
The NGO sector is politically very diverse, but the proposed reforms have caused such concern that even Cardinal Obando has opposed them, noting that, if the government were to exercise the control over the NGOs that the reforms to Law 147 spell out, the NGOs would cease to be non-governmental in their essence. Though all NGOs would be adversely affected by the proposed reforms, the particular targets are those groups most closely linked to the Sandinista Front. Virtually all of CEPAD's [Managua] staff and administration joined in a May 14 march of thousands of NGO supporters protesting the proposed restrictions. In another controversial move (see "Legislating Morality in the `New' Nicaragua"), Alem&aacucte;n has promised to create a Ministry of the Family.
Virtually all of this legislation has been introduced by Alemán as emergency or urgent legislation -- thus neatly sidestepping existing mechanisms that call for all legislation to go to committee and, once there, undergo a consultative process with the appropriate groups in Nicaraguan society. By calling the legislation "emergency," any bill goes to a direct vote on the floor of the National Assembly -- effectively quashing any substantive discussion.
Normal procedures mandate that any draft legislation be sent to committee for discussion among committee members (many of whom today say that the committees are less polarized and acrimonious than the legislature as a whole), as well as going through a consultation process with different groups from civil society. During the last legislative session, the women's movement was able to have a fairly significant impact on legislation through this consultative mechanism. The new president's style is a direct attack on legislative autonomy and underscores Alem&aacucte;n's interest in subverting any mechanisms that call for participation, discussion, or reflection.
Alejandro Martínez Cuenca, Planning Minister under the Sandinista administration, feels that Alemán will have to learn from these lessons of non-violent civic protests -- including the April shut-down that made his government sit up and take notice of the thousands of people it so openly ignored since January. Martínez Cuenca, echoing a view that is gaining ground in Nicaragua, believes that the country will simply cease to function unless the existing mechanisms that ensure broad consultations of all sectors of civil society are used, and used to their full extent.