"SHAM" AND "FARCE" IN NICARAGUA?
Brumberg, Abraham
Long before the election took place in Nicaragua, the Reagan administration dismissed it as "sham" and "Soviet style." After the election took place on November 4, 1984, President Reagan...
...the amount of free campaigning time on radio and TV was significantly increased...
...and a large part of the Catholic hierarchy...
...The only violence reported on election day in Nicaragua was caused by Contra attacks on polling stations, and votes were cast in heavily curtained booths, with ballots so designed as to make it impossible to see how they were marked...
...Godoy, whose candor, courage, and intelligence impressed me when we met in Managua last year, can certainly not be accused of sympathy for Nicaragua's extreme right wing, or for the Contras...
...In response to demands from the political opposition, including the Coordinadora, the FSLN initiated a "National Dialogue" on October 31, 1984...
...To the Left of the FSLN: PSN (Nicaraguan Socialist Party) — formed in 1944, recognized by the Soviet Union since 1970...
...As of this writing, the "dialogue" has not been resumed...
...The Times correspondent in Nicaragua, Stephen Kinzer, also reported cases of "very clear pressure" by U.S...
...7. 15 There is considerable dissension within the Directorate, which goes back to the pre-1979 period when the FSLN was split into several ideological factions...
...Hereafter SI...
...a For some recent reports on Contra atrocities, see "The Contras' Litany of Destruction," by Jonathan Steele and Tony Jenkins, Manchester Guardian Weekly, Nov...
...the memory of the radical policies of 1981-82 (when the Turbas, among others, were given free reign...
...The Administration never contemplated letting Cruz stay in the race," one official said, "because then the Sandinistas could justifiably claim that the elections were legitimate, making it much harder for the United States to oppose the Nicaraguan government...
...My principal sources 226 are a number of reports by delegations who observed the election, as well as the campaign that preceded it, on behalf of American and European human rights and political organizations...
...A "senior U.S...
...Some delegations included people favorably disposed to the Sandinista regime, but they were vastly outnumbered by those whose impartiality is beyond question...
...What is certain, however, is that both internal and external pressures bear directly on the central conflict— between authoritarian tendencies and those that favor political decentralization and pluralism...
...Canadian Church and Human Rights Delegation, Nicaragua 1984: Democracy, Elections, and War, Toronto...
...Cruz, Nicaragua's former ambassador to the United States who resigned from his post in November 1981, was nominated in July 1984 as the "Coordinadora's" presidential candidate...
...For revealing, if off-the-record, statements by Administration officials on this point, see "Administration Hardens Its Stance on Nicaragua," Washington Post, Dec...
...To the Right FSLN: PCD (Democratic Conservative Party) — considers itself "centrist...
...But the evidence leads to this conclusion...
...efforts to block a $60.3 million loan by the Inter-American Development Bank to Nicaragua—a loan, incidentally, aimed at providing financial credits for small and medium-size farmers in the country's private sector...
...51 pp...
...21, 1984...
...24, according to the New York Times on Jan...
...What is unquestionable is that the party was thrown into complete confusion but that nevertheless it polled well in the election...
...How reliable are they...
...Consider the following: Armed bands that excel in torture, rape, and murder are financed by the CIA and referred to routinely as "freedom fighters...
...Godoy himself served until then as labor minister...
...But the FSLN argued that under existing conditions (50,000 dead, 100,00 wounded, a ravaged economy, and a largely illiterate population), immediate elections were impractical...
...Godoy, the head of the PLI (Independent Liberal party), claimed that the FSLN had failed to provide "minimal conditions" for a fair election...
...No serious injuries were reported, and most of the several hundred rallies held during the campaign passed without disruption...
...nationalism parades in "socialist" clothes...
...Frances Moore Lapp& The Elections and Other Questions of Democracy in Nicaragua, Institute for Food and Development Policy, San Francisco...
...But it suggests that freedom of expression is likely to be the first victim of a siege mentality...
...17, 1984...
...After the election took place on November 4, 1984, President Reagan pronounced it a "farce...
...in favor of structural reforms, a "truly" mixed economy, an end to ties with Cuba and the Soviet Union...
...228 The Campaign ONE OF THE GRAVEST CHARGES leveled against the FSLN was that it used all the instruments at its disposal—the Sandinista Defense Committees (CDSs), the censorship apparatus, the bands of hotheads known as "Turbas"—to prevent the contending parties from getting their messages across, and to create a climate of "fear and intimidation...
...David MacMichael, for instance, [heard] "Clemente Guido addressing a rally over Radio Mundial...
...and that Dr...
...What evidence is there that it was indeed a "farce...
...Recent events are not encouraging...
...In an interview granted to the Sandinista daily Barricada, for instance, the presidential candidate of the Nicaraguan Communist party, Allan Zambrana, contemptuously rejected his interlocutor's claim that the Turba incidents happened spontaneously...
...14 pp...
...To many Nicaraguans, this meant a matter of months...
...In view of that, the WOLA report concluded, "the extension of the franchise should be supported...
...Ironically, given the widespread resistance among the young to the military draft (which also starts at age 16), the Sandinistas may well have bought themselves a pack of trouble: the young are not necessarily the ardent disciples of the revolution they once were...
...All this motivated Lord Chitnis, an old hand at Liberal politics, to deliver himself of some testy if amusing comments: As I traveled the country before polling day, I did not meet a single Liberal who was in favor of withdrawal and indeed met some who were extremely angry about what was going on...
...Liberal, corporatist, and populist elements" (to quote Corradi) vie with one another...
...had the requested three-day postponement been granted, Cruz would probably have returned from Managua empty-handed...
...Election Day ON THIS—as on so many other issues—all observers agree: the elections were eminently fair, the conditions for secrecy were scrupulously observed, the incidence of irregularities (as reported by the contesting parties) remarkably low...
...Excerpt of A Report to Willy Brandt, President of the Socialist International, on the Nicaraguan Elections, November 4, 1984, by Thorvald Stoltenberg, Socialist International Special Representative to Nicaragua...
...Whether and how these contradictions will be resolved is an open question...
...It is indisputable that many Nicaraguans fear (as LASA puts it) that " 'something would happen' to them if they don't do what the government wants" (p...
...On July 30, 1984, the Washington Post reported that Coordinadora spokespersons admitted it had no intention of participating in the elections...
...12, 1984...
...The FSLN also insisted—legitimately—that the Coordinadora's "proposals for major changes in the political structure and public policies should constitute the Coordinadora's party platform for the election, rather than conditions for the Coordinadora's entry into the electoral process" (LASA, p. 20...
...Why, just your garden-variety military exercises...
...Only a few months ago, he had delivered a speech at a closed meeting of the Nicaraguan Socialist party in which he characterized the election as a ruse aimed at obtaining international support for the regime...
...MAP-ML (Marxist-Leninist Popular Action Movement) — shades of Maoism...
...Its political program—and many of its specific demands appear in the platforms of other parties—is less notable than its policy of abstaining from the election...
...supports general program of the FSLN but criticized it for "arbitrary actions," "sectarianism," and "adventurism...
...With regard to foreign policy, the FSLN government was flanked by one party attacking it for aligning Nicaragua too closely with Soviet foreign policy (the PPSC), and another party attacking it for not bringing the country closer to the Soviet camp (the PCdeN...
...PLI (Independent Liberal Party) — affiliated with the Liberal International...
...At the last moment, however, Cruz announced that he could not sign the document without consulting his allies in Managua and asked for a three-day postponement...
...fiercely critical of "bourgeois" and "social democratic" FSLN...
...The Comandante referred to by Brandt was Bayardo Arce, one of the Directorate's leading hard-liners, whose personal commitment to the election was, to put it charitably, questionable...
...12 There was also an abstentionist faction within the PCD...
...On the other hand—and here I touch upon A List of Sources Report of the Latin American Studies Association Delegation to Observe the Nicaraguan General Election of November 4, 1984, Washington, D.C...
...The FSLN and the Opposition ABOUT 10 POLITICAL PARTIES have existed in Nicaragua since 1979, but although they were permitted, before 1984, to organize, hold indoor meetings, recruit members, and display political posters, their activities were so drastically circumscribed as to bar them from competing with the FSLN...
...Abstention from elections for political reasons is, as WOLA notes, a venerable Latin American practice (p...
...If so creditable a figure as Godoy decided to throw in the towel, then perhaps conditions for the elections were indeed as bad as they were so often portrayed...
...The evidence in the reports is completely at odds with this assertion...
...Answers to these crucial questions can only be tentative...
...and the PSD (Social Democratic Party), closely associated with La Prensa, and organized by right-of-center professionals in 1979...
...The FSLN made numerous concessions to the political opposition with regard to the electoral law, as it did with the timing of the elections: the minimal number of votes needed for representation in the National Assembly was reduced...
...Or are the Sandinistas so wily and dexterous as to have arranged for a modest victory, the better to hoodwink their adversaries...
...La Prensa has yet to mention any of the numerous—and incontrovertible— cases of Contra atrocities...
...Hereafter CCHRD...
...Over the years, the FSLN had tightened its grip on the government apparatus, on the police and the armed forces, achieving in effect a fusion between party and state...
...His statements on this subject since the election have been similarly inconsistent...
...authoritarian impulses coexist with sturdy individualism, and anti-Somozismo easily translates into anti-Sandinismo...
...these, needless to say, I consigned to the wastebasket...
...What follows is based only to a small extent on my own observations...
...and Charles Whalen, former congressman from Ohio (R...
...Will it gradually begin to relax its grip on the army, the police, and the state apparatus and—as Lappe so correctly puts it—"come to share power with other forces in the society...
...The U.S...
...Yet, in fact, the voting age in Nicaragua had been 16 from the late 1890s until 1912, and again from 1938 until 1979, when the Sandinistas themselves raised it to 21...
...But what about the larger questions...
...Tolerance, competition, and negotiations are the yeast for the growth of democratic pluralism in Nicaragua, both within the formal setting of the National (cum Constitutional) Assembly and outside it (the "National Dialogue...
...Without producing a shred of evidence, the State Department and the White House continue to accuse the Sandinistas of arming the Salvadoran guerrillas...
...Freedom of Expression and Assembly in Nicaragua During the Election Period—An Americas Watch Report, N.Y...
...The AW report, which deals exclusively with freedom of speech and assembly during the campaign, found that at meetings disrupted by Turbas "uniformed police were present . . . and it is clear that they acted to prevent direct physical contact" between the adversaries (AW, p. 10...
...The one issue on which the FSLN would not relent was the Coordinadora's request that the Contras be fully amnestied and given an opportunity to participate in the election...
...of Valid Votes: Assembly Seats Won: FSLN 735,967 67.0 61 PCD 154,327 14.0 14 PLI 105,560 9.6 9 PPSC 61,199 5.6 6 PCdeN 16,034 1.5 2 PSN 14,494 1.3 2 MAP-ML 11,352 1.0 2 (null) 71,209 Total: 1,170,142 100 96 presidential candidate, Constantino Pereira...
...unswervingly pro-Moscow...
...diplomats (LASA, p. 31...
...businessmen, "that he and his diocese had been actively involved in efforts to secure the removal of the FSLN government" (LASA, P. 9...
...Without such encouragement the opposite tendencies are likely to reassert themselves—with a vengeance...
...It provides for an independent body, the Supreme Electoral Council (SCE), to administer and supervise the elections...
...These tendencies may, if encouraged, survive and prevail...
...Many PLI candidates refused to heed Godoy's call, among them the party's vice231 ELECTION RESULTS: Party: Number of Votes Cast: Perc...
...On economic strategy, the PCD called for greater latitude for the private sector, while the MAP-ML advocated complete nationalization of private enterprise...
...after all, Paraguay may be a haven for Nazis, but it is not "hostile to the U.S...
...The LASA report (p...
...Think of the "liberators" sent by Moscow to Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968...
...And is La Prensa—as it is so often portrayed in the American press—a "model" of responsible journalism...
...For comments on the "leftism" of 1981-82, see my article, New Leader, April 30, 1984...
...the Sandinistas have proved, again and again, to be susceptible to internal and external political pressure...
...One issue on which the FSLN would not budge was lowering the voting age to 16...
...the latter raised the ante each time an agreement was in the offing...
...More than 30 organizations—political parties, unions, and professional societies—took part...
...Finally, to the matter of censorship...
...5 I have selected only reports whose conclusions rest on meticulous documentation and analysis, as well as on personal experiences that clearly match those related by other observers...
...Had it not been for the "abstentionist strategy" of some Liberals and of Cruz, the opposition as a whole might have won 45 percent of the Assembly seats...
...Each party was allowed to send its representatives as poll watchers (though not all could muster enough "fiscales" to cover the nearly 4,000 polling sites) and to count and sign the final vote tally for each precinct...
...The WOLA delegation, for example, included Ben Stephansky, former U.S...
...Fall 1984...
...83 pp...
...NONPARTICIPATING OPPOSITION: LA COORDINADORA (also CDN) — composed of three political parties: PSC (Social Christian Party), founded in 1957 and closely linked with the Christian Democratic party of Venezuela...
...17, 1984...
...Indeed, it is almost certain that without the confusion the party would have come second...
...in early August the Times noted that Archbishop Obando y Bravo (head of Nicaragua's Catholic church) acknowledged, in a meeting with U.S...
...233 Some Concluding Remarks IT SHOULD BE CLEAR by now that despite the disadvantages under which the opposition labored, both the electoral campaign and the election proper were not exactly "Soviet style," "sham," or a "farce...
...Hereafter Lapp& 111 227 one of the major findings of the reports—it would be absurd to dismiss the importance of international pressure...
...These include the presence of a largely conservative Catholic population, the pervasive hostility (noted by all observers) to anything smacking of Somozatype terror and regimentation, the continuing split within the Sandinista leadership between moderates and hard-liners, and the country's dependence, both economically and politically, on outside powers...
...Reagan has plenty...
...According to the electoral law, all preventive censorship (introduced as part of the "state of national emergency" in March 1982) was to be lifted, with the exception of items directly affecting "national security...
...25, 1984...
...I thought I had seen every excess of nonsense and mayhem to which The Election: Participants, Nonparticipants & Results PARTICIPATING PARTIES: FSLN (Sandinista National Liberation Front) — founded in 1961 as a guerrilla movement, was formally established as the "vanguard party of the revolution" in 1970...
...22 pp...
...James Shannon, congressman from Massachusetts (D...
...The United States, he said, might miss a "historic opportunity" to end the mounting crisis in the isthmus...
...International Human Rights Law Group and Washington Office on Latin America, A Political Opening in Nicaragua, Washington, D.C...
...Hereafter WOLA...
...One can legitimately speculate whether the compelling motive for postponing the elections was indeed "national reconstruction" or consolidation of power or, for that matter (as a government official told me ironically) because "my Sandinista friends perhaps just don't like elections...
...In the interval many a Comandante spoke disparagingly about the whole exercise, claiming that "the people" had already registered their choice by supporting the FSLN's armed victory over Somoza...
...government could, if it had the requisite wisdom and nonideological flexibility, devise a program of incentives and sanctions capable of moving Nicaragua—desperately in need of economic markets and capital—toward greater pluralism and democracy...
...Finally, the debates on TV and radio and at public meetings were hardly marked by excessive restraint...
...Lord Chitnis, The Election in Nicaragua, London...
...In the Soviets' parlance, it's "Western imperialism" that's always responsible for organizations such as Solidarity...
...strongly for separation of FSLN from state, for complete abolition of censorship, negotiations with the Contras...
...for abolishing "bourgeois" parties...
...more "economic" support (such as money and newsprint) was given to each party...
...The State Department engages in patently specious "negotiations" with the Nicaraguan government, but then breaks them off on the grounds that Managua is inflexible and intransigent.' (One is reminded of the "negotiations" between the Soviet Politburo and the Czech Communist leaders...
...15, 1984...
...Will power now be vested in the National Assembly, in Daniel Ortega, the elected president, and Sergio Ramirez, the vice-president—or will the National Directorate of the FSLN continue to call the shots...
...Socialist International Press Release, London, Nov...
...All this is by no means to give a clean bill of health to the FSLN...
...There are, however, countervailing forces that in a country like Nicaragua pull toward a more consensual political system...
...Arturo Cruz was ostensibly prevented from fielding his candidacy...
...Godoy would have had the democratic credentials to have become the leader of the opposition to the FSLN...
...Abstentionism may have pleased Reagan, but it did little to help political pluralism in Nicaragua...
...for its program, see Note 10 of this article...
...All in all, however, there was remarkably little violence...
...In their numerous conversations with Godoy, he seemed reluctant, if not altogether evasive, about the reasons for his dramatic decision, though he told the WOLA representatives that "the PLI would have more influence over political events in Nicaragua through the National Dialogue...
...This provision, the observers note, was applied to radio, TV, and to public campaign meetings and the like...
...The FSLN representative, declaring that he could temporize no longer, pronounced the agreement null and void...
...When the proposal was first put forward, many observers (including me) assumed this to be yet another stratagem designed to secure a broader mandate for the FSLN...
...He asked citizens to turn out en masse and use five minutes in the voting booth to get rid of a nonrepresentative, oppressive government...
...And could there be, for that matter, a return to the baleful "leftism" that prevailed in 1981-82...
...Is it perhaps because La Prensa is the only genuine voice of opposition in Nicaragua...
...No one can, or does, accuse Godoy of having been bought off by the Reagan administration...
...Alas, the evidence (and here I draw on my occasional reading of the paper as well as on the reports) suggests rather different answers...
...for an intricate structure of proportional representation that ensures the presence of even the smallest parties in the National Assembly...
...The election marks a step forward, but what of the danger of "two steps backward...
...Is the FSLN perhaps an inept totalitarian party...
...Embassy official visited my campaign manager and promised to help him with money to succeed me as party leader if he withdrew from my campaign...
...Not so, say the observers...
...230 By September 30, it seemed as if the differences between the FSLN and the Coordinadora were about to be patched up...
...The Timing Is IT TRUE that the elections would not have taken place had it not been for international— and mainly American—pressure...
...The SCE's president, Mariano Fiallos, is not a Sandinista— formally or otherwise—of which I was fully convinced after a three-hour conversation with him last year in Nicaragua...
...Hereafter Chitnis...
...PLC (Liberal Constitutional party), heir to the old Liberal party of Nicaragua...
...But since the American press (rather preoccupied at the time with our own election—and with fictitious Soviet MIGs) paid scant attention to that election, and since Washington claimed that it was the litmus test of Nicaragua's "totalitarian" character, a careful survey of what actually did (and did not) occur seems in order...
...Precisely: the U.S...
...Hardly the sort of speech one would expect to hear during a "sham election" (p...
...Before Arce rejected Cruz's terms, Mario Rappaccioli, one of Cruz's Conservative aides, told the press that Cruz "did not intend to run and was interested only in discrediting the elections" (Chitnis, p. 11...
...6, 1984...
...Doctors Assess Grim Cost of Nicaragua War," by Stephen Kinzer, New York Times, Oct...
...The official explanation...
...35 pp...
...But then, why had they so steadfastly predicted that "at least 80 percent" of the population would rally to their banner...
...During the campaign it refused to carry any of the eminently nonpartisan instructions issued by the SCE, and it ran only pieces about its "own" 229 candidate, Arturo Cruz...
...25 pp...
...The most serious occurred at three rallies organized by supporters of Arturo Cruz (more about Cruz later...
...government can also crush such a movement, if not by military intervention then by creating a situation where the Sandinistas, faced by an escalating war and forced to divert meager economic resources into defense, would scuttle such fledgling institutions as the National Assembly and initiate repressive and even totalitarian controls...
...And for good reasons: the legacy of the Somoza regime...
...3, 1984, Robert S. Leiken claimed that disaffected Nicaraguans considered it "dangerous to speak openly" with foreigners, unless they were sure of the latter's antiregime views...
...9 Barricada (Managua)—International Edition (in English), Sept...
...The Coordinadora employed this tactic with never a thought of getting anything in return (except proving Reagan's point that the elections were a "sham...
...No such objections have been voiced against an impending loan to Paraguay...
...24 pp...
...6 pp...
...In his article "Nicaragua's Untold Stories," New Republic, Oct...
...In its concluding paragraph the LASA report asserts that "the future of freedom and democracy in Nicaragua rests primarily in the hands of the United States...
...The elections have clearly benefited the latter...
...Yet it is a fact—whatever the inclinations of some Sandinistas—that the date was finally set, preparations went into motion in 1981, and by 1983 were moving decisively forward...
...Each registered party received from the state the sum of 9 million cordobas ($322,000), and the SCE published and repeatedly broadcast over the radio a code of ethics that Lord Chitnis, for one, found "almost insufferably pious" (Chitnis, p. 14...
...o For a detailed survey of Washington-Managua negotiations, see "Nicaragua: America's Diplomatic Charade," by Roy Gutman, Foreign Policy (Washington, D.C...
...The reports, however, agree that the Sandinistas were eager to please Nicaragua's "friends"—the Socialist International, West European governments, the Contadora nations—which all had warned the FSLN that unless it demonstrated a commitment to "political pluralism," it would be deprived of a crucial source of economic and political support (see Chitnis, p. 4...
...the inclination of some of the Sandinista leaders to equate legitimate dissent with treason.' Curiously, however, all observers found that fear scarcely deterred people from voicing anti-Sandinista sentiments, often in strident and acrimonious terms and within earshot of Sandinista officials, either to the odd foreigner or among themselves.' Nor did observers find any evidence that the CDSs either engaged in "spying activities" or threatened to withdraw ration cards—as has frequently been alleged—from those refusing to attend communal meetings or to cast their votes for the FSLN...
...In Nicaragua, the Sandinista FSLN pulled only 67 percent of the total vote, and parties opposed to the FSLN (on both the right and the left) obtained 35 out of the 96 seats in the National Assembly (see the box on p. 000...
...Hereafter AW...
...According to Brandt, the fault for breaking off the negotiations lay with the Coordinadora, not with "the Sandinista Comandante" (La Repubblica, Rome, Nov...
...How fair is this contention...
...Cruz, who spent a good part of the preelection period drumming up support in Latin America and in the United States, maintained a Hamletlike stance on the matter of the Contras, now denouncing them, now calling them "our esteemed fellow citizens who choose the route of war" (LASA, p. 18...
...When the Sandinistas took power in July 1979, they promised to hold elections as soon as "the conditions of national reconstruction permit it...
...for compulsory registration (to be used for the purposes of a national census) but not for compulsory voting (unlike the electoral laws in many other Latin American countries, including El Salvador...
...According to the WOLA report—to cite but one example—it was "well conceived . . . [and] compares favorably with electoral laws in other Latin American countries" (p...
...Proof...
...The Coordinadora also includes: two labor unions, CUS (Confederation for Trade Union Unification, affiliated with the ICFTU) and the CTNM (Nicaraguan Confederation of Workers, affiliated with the PSC), and also: COSEP (Higher Council of Private Enterprise...
...of Miami Press, 1984) chap...
...Abstentionism and Withdrawal To THE REAGAN ADMINISTRATION, ultimate proof of the election's fraudulence was the fact that Dr...
...Once the agreement was a dead letter, it cost the Coordinadora nothing to announce, 10 days later, that they had accepted it...
...and "Rebel, Sandinista Ambushes Viewed as Intensifying War," by Robert J. McCartney, Washington Post, Dec...
...The electoral law passed early in 1984 offers some answers to this question...
...No one knows the answer (a likely one, in my opinion, is sheer stupidity, and not the first or the last of its kind), but one could conceivably argue that the FSLN prepared the agreement knowing it would be rejected, thus providing it with an ideal pretext to terminate the negotiations.' So Machiavellian a hypothesis flies in the face of both logic and available evidence...
...First, the Coordinadora (see box, p. 000) is in fact smaller than the sum of its parts might suggest...
...February 1, 1985 Notes ' In June 1940, as a young boy, I witnessed such an exercise in democracy, when the citizens of Lithuania were ordered—literally at gunpoint—to affirm their approval for their country's inclusion into the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics...
...People concerned about the military draft could also choose several alternative policies to the right of the FSLN, including that of the PCD, which wants to abolish conscription altogether...
...And his parting shot: I have spent 25 years in and around the organizations of liberalism...
...And on Jan...
...Hereafter MacMichael...
...Philip Taubmann put it as follows: Since May [1984], when American policy toward the election was formed, the Administration has wanted the opposition candidate, Arturo Cruz, either not to enter the race or, if he did, to withdraw before the election, claiming that conditions were unfair, [senior Administration] officials said...
...At a meeting of the Socialist International in Rio de Janeiro, presided over by Willy Brandt, the two sides reached an agreement that called for a two-month postponement of the elections (a major FSLN concession), contingent on a cease-fire with the Contras, to be arranged by the Coordinadora...
...This brings me back to the United States...
...And the ultimate irony of Reagan's reliance on these divisions may well be that he will one day be accused of "losing" Nicaragua, much as other administrations have been pilloried for "losing" China, Indochina— or, for that matter, Eastern Europe...
...The very fact that the number of such incidents declined after the FSLN promised to "do something about it" speaks for itself...
...15, 1984...
...Prepared at the request of David Steel, leader of the British Liberal party...
...25, Reagan reached the nadir of Orwellian double-talk by dubbing aid to the Contras "an act of self-defense...
...21, 1984), COSEP "was in frequent contact with the CIA about the election...
...The "dialogue" was suspended after several meetings, as a result of considerable differences between the Coordinadora and other parties (not only the FSLN...
...Add to this the FSLN's influence over the various "mass organizations," the instrument of censorship, and the government's ownership of both television stations and of 16 out of the 39 radio stations, and you have a party that enjoys not merely "a powerful advantage" over its political rivals (in the words of the LASA report), but palpable political hegemony...
...He did...
...On January 18 the Reagan administration, citing "security reasons," announced its boycott of the World Court's hearings on Nicaragua's complaint of U.S...
...David Nolan, FSLN: The Ideology of the Sandinistas and the Nicaraguan Revolution (Coral Gables, Fla.: Univ...
...See my article "Cautious Optimism in Nicaragua," New Leader, April 30, 1984...
...There were, of course, incidents of harassment, some of them nasty...
...official in Central America" told 234 the LASA delegation that "the United States is not obliged to apply the same standard of judgment to a country whose government is avowedly hostile to the U.S...
...New York Times, Oct...
...When the Sandinistas acquire arms to defend themselves, the Administration floats fearful stories about "offensive weapons" bound to be used to "invade" neighboring Honduras or Costa Rica...
...The Sandinistas, he said, are "violating international law" by presumably engaging in aggression with the help of "Colonel Qaddafi's Libya, the PLO, and most recently, the Ayatollah Khomeini...
...David C. MacMichael, Summary of Observations of the Nicaraguan Elections, Nov...
...After all, it took the FSLN a whole year to set the date of the election...
...Second, whether or not Cruz ever seriously contemplated running in the elections, the evidence indicates that he was prevented from doing so, not by the Sandinistas (who were in fact keen on having him run in order further to legitimize the electoral process), but by his more intransigent allies in the Coordinadoraand by the United States...
...3), therefore, is clearly justified in concluding that "the Sandinistas had essentially adhered to their own publicly announced schedule for holding [the election...
...When I saw Rappaccioli in Managua and asked him to describe his party's program, he replied: "We stand for four freedoms—you know, like 235 your President Roosevelt: freedom of religion, freedom of expression, freedom for private enterprise, and...
...As spokesman for his party, Godoy had been campaigning vigorously, opposing the FSLN particularly on economic issues and on the Cuban and Soviet presence in the country...
...But his absence from the ballot presumably invalidated the whole electoral process...
...As for Clemente Guido, the presidential candidate of the PCD (Popular Conservative party) he actually told John B. Oakes (of the New York Times) that "two weeks before the election a U.S...
...shit, I forgot the last freedom...
...A fourth party, PCN (Nicaraguan Conservative party), a minuscule splinter of the old Conservative party, has not been officially recognized as a party...
...28, 1984...
...All of this—which the reports carefully document— may explain the FSLN's unremitting hostility to La Prensa...
...The purpose was to discuss basic problems about Nicaragua's political future, such as separation of party and state, religious freedom, human rights, future elections, and so on...
...Precisely what kind of concessions he expected to wrest from the FSLN at that late stage he did not divulge to his interviewers, who all were mystified as to his motives and bemused by his modus operandi...
...The PLI, which had a leading role in the overthrow of the Somoza dictatorship, was part of the "Popular Revolutionary Front" until February 1984...
...Well, of the 500 or so foreign observers there were some who produced pro-Sandinista panegyrics...
...Nicaragua might now be moving toward a pluralist democracy...
...Christianity seems to many people compatible with revolutionary anticapitalism...
...The WOLA, LASA, Chitnis, and CC reports all demonstrate in meticulous detail that the FSLN made significant concessions to the Coordinadora...
...Observers' accounts of the character and functions of the CDSs accord, in general, with the view of Juan Corradi (Dissent, Summer 1984), who found the CDSs a mixed bag—some "innocuous," some acting "spontaneously," others following "the FSLN line...
...as for a country, like El Salvador, where it is not" [LASA, p. 32] .) On January 20 the Washington Post ran a long story by Dana Priest on U.S...
...and Washington...
...To anyone familiar with the kind of electoral exercises conducted regularly in the Soviet bloc, so unsparing a judgment seems odd...
...4, 1984, Washington D.C...
...232 they are prone, but the Nicaragua Liberals proved me wrong...
...occasionally mildly critical of the Soviet Union...
...Since the Sandinistas were obviously embarrassed by the speech—and formally disavowed it—why then did they delegate Bayardo Arce to carry on the negotiations...
...8 The FSLN has not cornered the market on stupid behavior...
...Despite Cruz's withdrawal and the PLI's semiwithdrawal, the Nicaraguan voter still faced a relatively wide range of choices on major issues—"considerably wider," as the LASA report puts it: than in recent elections in El Salvador and Guatemala...
...but the provision was cavalierly disregarded in the case of the daily newspaper La Prensa...
...Hereafter LASA...
...One pretext for invading Czechoslovakia in 1968 was the "discovery" of a "cache" of West German arms in the Bohemian countryside...
...but so does the fact that concerted pressure forced the Sandinistas to make a promise—and to honor it...
...Gonzales, like the Pope, has no divisions—while Mr...
...What is to prevent a "vanguard party," imbued with a self-righteous sense of its historical mission and a built-in bias against "bourgeois" institutions (presumably including "bourgeois democracy") from making short shrift of the electoral results...
...In the end the result was a smaller PLI representation in the National Assembly than his party would reasonably have expected to obtain...
...Such pressure clearly influenced the decision to advance the election date to November 1984, as Sandinista officials themselves have admitted...
...To deal with this question so long after the event may strike the reader as an academic exercise...
...Yet the question is not so much whether the FSLN is effectively in control, as whether there are any signs that it is ready to dilute its hegemony by providing meaningful (that is, institutional) political space for its critics...
...I'm not surprised...
...embassy officials subjected him, in the words of one of his "oldest friends," "to terrible pressure from the Embassy" (LASA, p. 30...
...None...
...8, 1984...
...The paper continued to be subjected to pettifogging and arbitrary harassment, which on two occasions forced the editors to suspend publication...
...This is to say he hoped to achieve the goal of meaningful compromise outside the electoral process (WOLA, p. 37...
...Such a percentage would automatically have blocked any FSLN attempts to railroad through an unpopular constitution, for the law requires a two-thirds vote in favor of any provision of the new constitution...
...It was a fighting speech...
...For months, American land and naval forces conduct intimidating maneuvers near Nicaragua...
...Think of the Warsaw Pact maneuvers held intermittently during the Solidarity period in Poland...
...The FSLN had clearly made strong efforts to reach an agreement with Cruz, so as to appease his supporters in the West—why then torpedo its own plans...
...for "dictatorship of the proletariat," land to the peasants and (well, read Lenin...
...MacMichael is a former CIA officer who resigned from the Agency in the summer of 1984 after charging it with having falsified reports on Nicaraguan aid to Salvadoran rebels...
...Gonzalez also pointed to the presence at the inauguration of Roman Catholic bishops (the invocation was given by Pablo Antonio Vega, president of the Bishops' Conference and a bitter critic of the regime in the past), all of which he took as signs of "clear efforts of flexibility on Nicaragua's part...
...the SCE, whose original three members were, according to the opposition, all Sandinistas, was augmented by two non-FSLN members;6 the campaign period was extended to three months...
...On the same day the Socialist prime minister of Spain, Felipe Gonzalez, issued a statement praising Daniel Ortega's inaugural speech, which affirmed the government's commitment to political pluralism...
...The lack of an effective structure of checks and balances is, of course, dangerous...
...was determined to undermine the Nicaraguan elections as a means of assuring their illegitimacy in order to justify continued support of the Contras" (p...
...While some of the Coordinadora's members have been willing to reach agreement with the Sandinistas, the organization is dominated by the fiercely antiregime COSEP, the umbrella organization of large-scale entrepreneurs...
...Virgilio Godoy's last-minute decision to withdraw from the race was a different matter...
...support for the Contras...
...2 What is striking about these attempts is how much they recall some Soviet modi operandi...
...In other words, it is at least questionable whether the Liberal party did withdraw...
...To my knowledge, the Communist party of the Soviet Union has never failed to obtain less than a 98 percent electoral "mandate...
...Guido's particular allegation remains unsubstantiated, but WOLA's careful conclusion cannot be gainsaid: "There is considerable evidence to suggest that the U.S...
...Fraud' in Nicaragua," New York Times, Nov...
...This neither justifies the censorship, nor should it obscure the far more important fact that no constitutional or institutional checks on the regime's freedom to wield censorship are yet in place...
...The provision requiring voters to retain their registration cards was rescinded, thus eliminating the possibility "that in the future the failure to vote (as evidenced by the lack of a validated voter credential) could be used as the basis for government reprisals or denial of public services" (LASA, p. 11...
...LASA, p. 20...
...According to Philip Taubman (New York Times, Oct...
...deputy assistant secretary of state and former ambassador to Bolivia...
...The trouble, of course, is that Sr...
...PCdeN (Nicaraguan Communist Party) — broke away from PSN in 1971...
...Apart from its penchant for unabashed sensationalism (some time ago it carried a front-page story on a woman giving birth to a chicken), La Prensa is also at least as parti pris as Barricada—indeed perhaps even more so, since the latter has carried interviews with opposition leaders, while La Prensa has studiously refrained from publishing anything even remotely favorable to the government...
...Chitnis, p. 12...
...This, incidentally, was one of the criticisms voiced by the Socialist International et al...
...Only someone stupid or who doesn't want to think could believe that [Sandinista] leaders aren't aware of actions taken by their supporters," said Zambrana.9 When it comes to these matters, I suppose a good Communist knows what he is talking about...
...it has, in effect, promoted the Contra cause as well as Reagan's policy on Nicaragua...
...Moreover, in view of the Coordinadora's record, it is fair to assume that it would not have ratified the agreement...
...Anti-Sandinista Rebels Wage Brutal War in Nicaragua," by John Lee Anderson, San Diego Union, Sept...
...PPSC (Popular Social Christian Party) — platform calls for "socialism inspired by Christianity," substantive concessions to the Catholic church including religious instruction in public schools, for abolition of military draft, less state interference in the economy...
...Why this hostile and heavy-handed interference...
...Nicaragua teems with bizarre contradictions...
...Guido promised to end military conscription if elected and called for defeat of the "Communist" Sandinistas amid much chanting of "democracia si, cornunismo no...
...Political opposition has not only been legitimized—it has acquired a firmer institutional basis...
...But the frequent meetings between Godoy and U.S...
...According to the Socialist International document, the campaign "was fierce, including outspoken attacks from all parties concerned...
...These are baffling questions—but not, apparently, to an Administration that is interested in little more than justifying its attempt to topple the Nicaraguan government...
...To come back now to the Nicaraguan election...
...the Czechs proved so "intransigent" that they had to be invaded a few weeks later...
...The full text of the report was not available to me...
...it failed...
...Even so hostile a critic of the Sandinistas as David Nolan notes that their "Marxism-Leninism" is at odds with their determined and consistent rejection of terror, "revolutionary" or otherwise, or with their espousal of a mixed economy as a permanent, not temporarily expedient, feature of the Nicaraguan political order...
...And so, in August 1980, the Council of State passed a decree stipulating that the election would take place in 1985...
...Admittedly, the charge that Cruz was in effect manipulated by the Coordinadora is a grave one...
...In El Salvador's election, praised by the Reagan administration as "a great civics lesson" for North Americans, voting was compulsory, violence was rampant (a number of people were killed on election day), a sizable portion of the voting population was excluded, and both ballots and ballot boxes were translucent...
Vol. 32 • April 1985 • No. 2
