Pre-election briefing: July 2006. No US Interference in the Nicaraguan Elections!  

Nicaraguans go to the polls on 5 November to elect a new president and members of the National Assembly. As in every election in Nicaraguan history the US is undermining the right of Nicaraguans to elect the government of their choice by interfering in order to ensure victory for their favoured candidate Eduardo Montealegre.
In the past few years tens of millions of Latin Americans have rejected governments that toe the US ‘free’ market line and have voted in left and centre-left governments committed to redressing deepening poverty and inequalities. In this context elections for the presidency and National Assembly take place in Nicaragua on November 5th. The political scene is complex: four coalitions are standing reflecting the splits in both the Sandinistas and the Liberals. This makes the result very difficult to predict. The coalitions and candidates are:

     Constitutional Liberal Party (PLC): José Rizo
     Liberal Alliance for Nicaragua (ALN): Eduardo Montealegre
     Nicaragua Triumphs / FSLN alliance: Daniel Ortega
     Movement to Rescue Sandinismo (MRS): Presidential candidate Herty Lewites died of a heart attack on July 2nd.   The vice-presidential candidate, Edmundo Jarquin, will now become the presidential candidate and singer/songwriter Carlos Meijia Godoy will be the vice presidential candidate

US policy: Unite the right and defeat the FSLN

In the well-trodden path of US manipulation and interference in Nicaraguan internal affairs, US Ambassador to Nicaragua, Paul Trivelli, has stated many times that the US “will establish cordial relations with any government that is elected democratically …that has a reasonable economic policy and is ready to cooperate with us.” In other words the US will accept the outcome of Nicaraguan elections as long as voters elect a government that supports ‘free’ trade policies including DR-CAFTA (the Dominican Republic Central America Free Trade Agreement, opposed by small farmers, unions and civil society groups across the region), responds positively to US requests for support in the war on terror and distances itself as far as possible from Cuba and Venezuela.

Examples of US interference in the past

* US ‘democratic’ credentials in Nicaragua over the past 150 years consist of eleven military interventions (including a 25 year occupation by US marines); years of support for the Somoza dictatorship; political, economic and indirect military intervention in the 1980s in an attempt to overthrow the democratically elected Sandinista government (this resulted in the deaths of 30,000 people); and support for right-wing parties and coalitions in the 1990, 1996 and 2001 elections in order to defeat the FSLN whilst doing all they could to discredit the left.
Noam Chomsky recently described how Robert Pastor, President Carter's national security adviser for Latin America put it. “He (Pastor) explained why the administration had to support the murderous and corrupt Somoza regime in Nicaragua, and…to maintain the US-trained National Guard even as it was massacring the population ‘with a brutality a nation usually reserves for its enemy’, killing some 40,000 people. The reason was the familiar one: ‘ The United States wanted Nicaraguans to act independently, except when doing so would affect US interests adversely.’ “

Interference in 2006

* In the run up to the 31 May deadline for registering parties and candidates, US Ambassador Paul Trivelli went into shameless and desperate overdrive offering financial and technical support to right-wing parties to choose a presidential candidate to defeat Daniel Ortega. Divisions on the right, however, proved too deep and bitter for even the carrot of US support and dollars to overcome. The right wing remains split and two alliances are registered with the Supreme Electoral Council: the Nicaragua Liberal Alliance (ALN) under Eduardo Montealegre and the Constitutionalist Liberal Party (PLC) led by José Rizo.

* During the same period Trivelli made veiled threats in the Nicaraguan press reminding voters of their dependence on remittances from the US and the reliance of Nicaragua on US aid, implying that a vote for the ‘wrong’ party would have negative consequences for both.

* On February 28th the notorious John Negroponte, US Director of National Intelligence, former US Ambassador to Honduras and supporter of death squads during the Nicaragua contra war, told the US Senate Armed Forces Committee that US intelligence services are ‘ closely observing the presidential elections processes in Peru and Nicaragua.’

* A delegation from the US 17 – 24 June made up of academics and members of civil society organization reported that: ‘With the exception of Ambassador Trivelli, all persons interviewed (this included representatives of all major parties) believed that the US government had gone beyond what was appropriate and correct in its involvement in the electoral process to the degree that its involvement is seen and felt as unacceptable intervention.’ They went on to report that a staff member of the International Republican Institute stated: ‘The relationship between Nicaragua and the United States is like that of a son and a father and children do not argue with their parents.’

One certainty in this complex panorama is that the US will continue to polarise the situation by meddling in Nicaragua’s political affairs. There will be more threatening statements by the US ambassador and the State department, more funding for bodies promoting the US vision of ‘democracy’, more slurs and attacks on the FSLN and further blackmailing of the Nicaragua electorate to vote the ‘right’ way.

Nicaragua Solidarity Campaign
13/07/06

No US Interference in the Nicaraguan Elections !

* Letter to the press. 08/11/06
Following the election result we sent a letter to The Guardian as follows. It was printed though in an edited form.