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Daniel Ortega’s first 100 days: a time of contradictions
Jane Freeland

On April 20th Daniel Ortega completed his first hundred days in power. In 100 days, governments are supposed to put down clear markers of their future intentions. Ortega’s markers, though, seem as fuzzy as some of his election campaign rhetoric with its incompatible appeals to contradictory groups. Commentators of all stripes agree that what is distinctive here is a lack of clear communication between government and citizens. According to IPADE (Institute for Development and Democracy) less information is available to public access than under previous governments, and the independent economist Nestor Avendaño grumbles: “If the Bolaños government officials were mediocre, at least they talked a good line. This lot doesn’t talk.” Consequently, each new move is scrutinized for hidden meaning, interpretations are filtered through the suspicions or expectations of one or other interest group, and commentary is full of coded allusions to ghosts from the past.

One example: a hostile press repeats daily that Ortega is developing an “authoritarian, family regime”. This doesn’t allude to pro-family policies, but raises the spectres of the Somoza family dynasty and of the top-down tendencies of the last, war-besieged Ortega government. From a series of actions that may have had benign motives, but were announced without consultation, hostile opponents and “critical sympathisers” alike read a worrying sub-text: Ortega delegates 50% of his authority to his wife, in the name of equal representation for women, but does not repeal the law against therapeutic abortion; they decide to govern not from the Presidential Palace, but from their own home (which is also the FSLN headquarters), in the spirit of substantial cuts to mega-salaries, including the President’s own; a bill to devolve more executive power to the National Assembly is postponed, whilst amendments to the constitution are considered, to allow Presidents to be elected for a consecutive second term; no Minister of Defence is yet appointed, so that Ortega is not only titular Chief of Armed Forces but in direct control of them, without the institutional subordination to civil power previously instituted.

Greater transparency and willingness to use the channels for public consultation existing in Nicaraguan law would do much to counter these suspicions. Yet, also without consultation, Citizens’ Councils are being instituted, recalling the “direct democracy” of the early revolutionary years. After a cruel dictatorship, direct democracy was a crucial first step towards citizen representation. Seventeen years later, with municipal autonomy, Regional Autonomous Councils in the Caribbean Coast, and a Law of Citizen Participation in place, they seem to many to create a parallel system with unclear lines of communication from base to cupola. Granted, previous governments often paid only lip-service to these participatory structures, but people hoped for more from a government whose slogan is “the people are President”.

Limited scope for change
Part of the problem is that Ortega is not really “in power”, as he was in the 1980s. Instead, he governs with the majority of the population against him – at least not in favour. Not even his supporters form a solid block; they are, says José Luis Rocha, researcher into Central American migration, a “rainbow of voters” with varying degrees of sympathy and willingness to give him the benefit of the doubt. So this has to be a Government of Reconciliation and Peace.

Ortega’s room for manoeuvre is highly constrained in two key areas: in the National Assembly, where the FSLN bench is also a “rainbow”; and in the economy where, as a Highly Indebted Poor Country (HIPIC), Nicaragua is depends desperately on foreign aid and the international financial institutions – the World Bank, the International Development Bank (IDB), the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

In the National Assembly, the FSLN is the largest but not the majority party. Even with two defections from the MRS (Movement for the Renewal of Sandinismo) and one from the ALN (National Liberal Alliance), it can muster only 41 votes, six short of the simple majority needed to pass ordinary legislation. For the two thirds majority required for constitutional reforms like presidential re-election, alliances and deals are indispensable. They will be complicated, given two mutually hostile right-wing opposition parties to play off against each other. Here, too, people scrutinize voting patterns for signs that the Ortega-Alemán pact is still intact, especially since Alemán had a VIP seat on the inaugural platform and his “family prison regime” is expanded to let him roam the country and attend public meetings.

As for the economic context, ex-President Bolaños boasts he has bequeathed Ortega a “maturely stable” economy, a view confirmed in the latest IMF projections, and also by a recent manifesto from the MRS Alliance (Movement for the Renewal of Sandinismo): 3-4% annual growth, single figure inflation, unprecedented monetary reserves, reduced debt, and increased exports. The implication is clear: neo-liberal policies work, and shouldn’t be tampered with. But of course, this stability was bought at the cost of uncritical adoption of an economic model that keeps Nicaragua competitive in the global market as a low-wage, high-profit economy, with social spending and public sector wages are kept low through privatization of essential services – or basic human rights. Even the IMF admitted euphemistically, in February talks with a delegation from the Civil Coalition (CC, which coordinates over 600 civil society organizations), that these policies had “not been accompanied with poverty reduction”. Just so; 75% of Nicaraguans now struggle to survive on less than £1 a day.

Liberation from the IMF?
Ortega talks often of re-negotiating the conditions of the next IMF programme – the last one ended in December 2006 – even of freeing Nicaragua from the IMF within 5 years: “We cannot be forever demanding that the people of this country tighten their belts”. A third round of talks was scheduled for April 30th. So far, negotiations have been very hush-hush, but at least, as Nestor Avendaño says: “for the first time in history we won’t have IMF servants in our government”. IMF director Rodrigo Rato speaks of “solid bases” for agreement in the Ortega economic programme, and of his willingness to give the new government “as much time as it needs” to develop it. But is this coded approval for more neoliberalism, or a sign of a more relaxed approach in response to international pressure?
Some point out that where the political will exists, even poor countries (e.g. Bolivia, Honduras and Malawi) have persuaded the IMF to honour its brief to relieve poverty. The government’s negotiating hand is also much strengthened by the financing alternatives offered by Venezuela and Cuba through ALBA (the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas), said to be worth over $US400m in loans and in such kind as cheap oil, generating plants to ease Nicaragua’s chronic energy crisis, assistance with literacy programmes. But, as Avendaño argues, most of this solidarity package has to operate through cooperation agreements with the private sector. Projects involving public investment mean debt, which Nicaragua is not permitted to incur as a recent recipient of debt relief.

The almost unanimous public disappointment that greeted the mid-term budget (2007-2009) must be seen against this background. Passed through the National Assembly in March 2007 on a joint FSLN-PLC vote, it made few changes to the budget prepared by the departing Bolaños government, especially concerning spending priorities. For now, its seems, “steady as she goes” policies to reassure big business, foreign investors and international financial institutions overshadow election promises to impoverished Nicaragua. Some increase in social spending is budgeted, funded from the US$23m per year that debt relief has freed up. This covers school meals for primary school children, free medicines, aspects of the Zero Hunger programme, the abolition of school fees, a small rise in salaries for teachers and health workers. But these do not fully meet salary agreements for health workers following the 2006 strikes, nor bring teacher salaries up to Central American averages.

Instead, a greater proportion of the freed resources were allocated to “honouring” the internal debt, even though part of it covers debts incurred in the fraud-ridden collapse of banks during Alemán’s regime. This breaks Ortega’s election promises to renegotiate this part of the debt to free more funds for social programmes. It also ignores the HIPC ruling that resources from debt relief must fund social spending on poverty reduction. Now that the National Assembly has passed this bill, its inherent injustices are made legal. According to IPADE, further budget reforms are expected in June. Perhaps, with IMF situation clearer, this will be a more reforming budget.

An “uneventful” 100 days?
So says a much-repeated article on US websites. Has the government achieved nothing then? So why did Ortega score a 61% public approval rating in April polls? To get a more grassroots perspective, its worth examining two social programmes which directly respond to election promises, being initiated by ministers and advisers drawn from important civil society organizations: the “zero hunger” programme to tackle malnutrition and hunger, and the abolition of school fees, which affects all Nicaraguan families.

The Zero Hunger programme provides an alternative to the large-scale, export-led model of agricultural development underlying DR-CAFTA (Dominican Republic-Central American Free Trade Agreement), which systematically denies credit to small and medium-scale farmers not producing for export – 96% of Nicaragua’s 233,000 producers, according to CIPRES (Centre for Rural and Social Promotion, Research and Development). CAFTA has already increased national dependency on food imports by $300m a year, according to a recent Witness for Peace article, producing periodic hunger and malnutrition for many rural families.

Instead, the Zero Hunger Programme rolls out a model of small-scale sustainable farming developed and successfully run by CIPRES with 750 families since the mid-1990s. Coordinated by Orlando Nuñez, founder and director of CIPRES, the programme will operate through a network of around 150 agricultural NGOs affiliated to CIPRES. Each family receives a pregnant pig (or cow), a bio-digester to make fuel from animal excrement, credit from a revolving loan, and training in holistic, organic farming; a package worth $2000 per family. Women own and manage the animals and money, to guarantee sustainability and the focus on family nutrition; in time, families are to form cooperative associations to ensure market competitiveness. Like the basic rations distributed by the first Sandinista government, the CIPRES project has already improved the diet and health of these families. But it also gives them control: 80% of the original 750 are now financially solvent, selling surplus in the market, returning their loans to the fund.

The aim is to scale up the programme gradually, incorporating 1,500 families in each of the 5 years of this government. Scaling up has encountered structural and coordination problems of coordination among the three ministries and the NGOs designated to manage the programme. Critics, especially those wedded to the neo-liberal agro-export model, eagerly interpret these teething troubles as signs that the programme is unviable, mere “populist discourse”. Others query the programme’s claim that it can eliminate the need for basic food imports within five years. Nevertheless, it has already begun to alleviate hunger: some of the first to benefit will be the disaster-stricken Mayangna and Miskitu indigenous communities in the Río Coco area. If it retains clear budget support, capitalises on its potential to attract further international funding, and resolves its structural problems, this is an important social programme, with implications beyond Nicaragua.

Ending educational “autonomy”
Ortega’s Minister of Education is Miguel de Castilla Urbina, co-founder and leader of the Education and Human Development Forum (FEDH) of the CC network, the impetus behind the development of a National Agenda for Education endorsed before the elections by all parties. On the day of the FSLN victory, he announced the end of
“school autonomy”, another favourite of the international financial institutions. This devolves responsibility for school administration from government to teachers, parents, and communities. This democratic advantage, though, is financed by “voluntary” fees of around C$10 per pupil per month (US$1 or 50p at present exchange rates), which effectively exclude the poorest parents and children from the democracy it is meant to bring. Asked why their children drop out of school, the main reason given by around 40% of parents is inability to pay these fees. No wonder rates of school attendance in Nicaragua are so appallingly low (see box insert).

Abolishing these fees was a popular move that triggered a dramatic rise in school enrolments for the new school year. At the same time, it has revealed deep-seated problems that school drop-out concealed. According to de Castilla’s own Annual Operational Plan (POA) for education, the system now needs 2,000 more classrooms, and 4,000 teachers to reduce pupil teacher ratios that in some schools have reached 60:1. Abolishing school autonomy improves coverage, a crucial first step, but not the educational quality that will convince poor parents of the longer-term advantages of education over the short-term ones of children’s contribution to family income.

The increase in the mid-term education budget does not cover all this. Indeed, UNESCO estimates education spending must increase from the current 4% of GDP to at least 7%, if Nicaragua is to meet the Millennium Development Goal of a complete primary education for all by 2015. Part of this increase must include paying salaries that will attract and retain good teachers. The mid-term provision of a promised $30 rise in teachers’ salaries has disappointed expectations – teachers still earn only 49% of an inadequate minimum wage, the lowest teacher salaries in Central America.

This disappointment was actually aggravated by the abolition of school fees. In some schools, fees supplemented teachers’ salaries, so teachers are actually worse off. This deficit is not compensated for by the ‘fees replacement’ money in the education budget. In response, the non-Sandinista Teachers Sindicalist Union (USM) is on strike for a further wage rise, actions that further disrupted the start of the school year (in March). They are not officially supported by ANDEN, the Sandinista teachers’ union, which normally supports these claims. These ideological divisions, of course, undermine the teachers cause and are too be easily manipulated by right-wing opponents.

All this obscures some very positive signs, evident from Miguel de Castilla’s POA, now about to go for consultation through the channels developed by the FEDH, to the education sector and civil society organizations. One of the plan’s strengths is its striking resemblance to the already endorsed National Education Agenda. Among other things, it provides for citizen participation in education policy – without fees – a fully coordinated education system and a better-trained teaching body.

Much now depends on whether the “Social Cabinet” ministers can win support for their policies from the “Economic Cabinet”, many of whose members are businessmen and entrepreneurs, not all drawn from the FSLN, and of course on the outcome of IMF talks.
Fraught with blunders and uncertainty though the first hundred days have been, they are not irreparable. Beneath them are some very positive moves, and a concern for ordinary Nicaraguans that has not been detectable under previous regimes. Watch this space.

Note from Jane Freeland: I am very grateful to Julián Guevara, NSC’s Field Worker in Managua, and to Ralph Gayton, of the Norwich/El Viejo Town Twinning Group, for putting some very useful documentation in my way.