On June 11, the axe of Nicaragua's Supreme Electoral Council (CSE) came down on the Sandinista Renovation Movement (MRS) and the Conservative Party of Nicaragua (PCN).
The MRS are a social democratic split from the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) of President Daniel Ortega, while the PCN are an old historical right-wing party, now a shell of its former self.
The CSE explained its action based on infractions of the electoral law. However, it is not necessary to probe the legal details to ascertain that the forced deregistrations are a grave anti-democratic action — made possible by an anti-democratic law, based on state control over political parties.
In response to an MRS petition, the Managua Appeals Court has referred the CSE decision to the Supreme Court. This will likely mean a long delay before a final legal ruling is made.
The CSE decision constitutes a serious political error by the FSLN and the Constitutionalist Liberal Party (PLC) — which has the second highest number of seats in the National Assembly (AN) and also backed the decision.
All Nicaraguans should have the right to form parties and run in elections either as individuals or parties. Parties should not have to get state approval in order to participate.
What is needed is a clearly focused campaign to restore the the two parties to legality. The electoral law should be completely changed to get the state out of the "business" of monitoring and controlling the internal affairs of political organisations.
It should be noted, however, that no party in the AN, the MRS included, pushes this position.
Many people and groups that support the government disagree with this undemocratic decision, including the FSLN Managua mayor Dionisio Marenco.
FSLN dictatorship?
The MRS campaign, also backed by the "Rescate group" (the Sandinista Recovery Movement), has escalated into an anti-government offensive based on the charge that the current government is a dictatorship of the same ilk as the infamously brutal US-backed Somoza dictatorship that was overthrown in the 1979 FSLN-led revolution.
Protests have been dotted with signs saying "Ortega equals Somoza", and similar wild denunciations.
The priority of the opposition is to stop the "new dictatorship" — to topple the government.
The MRS-envisaged "united front" includes the forces of Eduardo Montealegre (the candidate of the US embassy in the last presidential elections) and anti-government newspapers such as La Prensa (pro-imperialist) and El Nuevo Diario (pro-MRS).
Also included are many internationally financed NGOs claiming to support "civil society". The NGO elite have, since 1990, become a new sector of the well-off middle class.
The decision to turn the defence of the MRS's basic right to exist as a legal party into an anti-government offensive is a major error. It cuts out any possibility of influencing government supporters, the FSLN grassroots, those involved in the Citizens' Power Committees (CPCs), many trade unions and important indigenous movements.
What we see is an alliance with the extreme right and the oligarchy.
MRS leader Edmundo Jarquin has called for intervention from the Organisation of American States "to restore political pluralism in the country".
Nicaragua's famous singer-songwriting brothers, Carlos Mejia Godoy and Luis Enrique Mejia Godoy have prohibited the government and FSLN from using their music at official events. Both are the composers of many of the most popular revolutionary songs of the long Sandinista struggle. Carlos was the MRS candidate for vice president in 2006. His musical properties are registered in Spain and he has threatened legal action if his ban is not respected.
These prohibitions have caused great controversy and resentment. Some of the families of the martyrs who are the subjects of many of their songs feel insulted, such as German Pomares Herrera — the son of two Sandinista martyrs, who wrote a protest letter and says he feels that his parents are now the property of Carlos Mejia.
However, there is no way the Godoy brothers can prevent the mass base of the FSLN and the unions from singing the songs of the revolution. To appreciate the sense of outrage, think how socialists would feel if the descendants of the composer of the "Internationale" banned them from singing it. Is "Solidarity Forever" someone's intellectual property?
Opposition's goal
There is no reason to doubt that the goal of the anti-government forces is to bring down the government. MRS leader Victor Tirado Lopez made this clear in a June 15 La Presna interview.
MRS leaders hope they will get a mass response to the call to "take the streets", while the FSLN says it will outmatch the right "in the streets".
Independent journalist Adolfo Pastran, no friend of the government, wrote in the June 12 Informe Pastran: "The opposition demands a dialogue with the government ... under democratic rules, but at the same time they want to topple the Presidency ... They are looking for a way to proscribe Sandinismo from power ... instead of pressing for real political, economic and social changes from the National Assembly."
Writer Amaru Barahona took up comparison between the FSLN government with the Somoza dictatorship in a June 12 El Nuevo Diario article, entitled "A grotesque parallelism". He pointed out that the Somoza dynasty maintained power based on support from Washington, control of the armed forces and the resort to "systematic violent repression against popular classes (assassinations, torture, jails) ...".
"I ask myself", he said of the current government, "where are the assassinations, the tortured, or the jailed?"
There is complete media freedom in Nicaragua. As in Venezuela, most media are privately owned and is virulently anti-government.
The alleged parallel with Somoza makes no sense for a government whose first foreign policy decisions were to ally with revolutionary Cuba, join the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA) anti-imperialist trade alliance and support Venezuela's revolutionary process. The new government spoke out strongly against imperialist aggression in Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine.
Those are hardly traits one observed in the Somoza dictatorship.
The MRS insistence on placing an equal sign between Ortega and Somaza is miseducating today's youth, who did not experience the real dictatorship or the subsequent Sandinista revolution. If Ortega's government is a dictatorship like Somoza's, doesn't that call into question the whole Sandinista struggle?
Ironically, this propaganda makes the Somoza regime look pretty good. It also begs the question of whether the opposition needs to resort to armed struggle like under Somoza. That question has been on the tip of the tongues of some opposition leaders.
This undoubtedly is of considerable interest to the US State Department and its destabilisation plans.
The MRS is now blaming the government for the growing hunger and misery. You would almost think they had never heard of the steep rise in international oil and food prices, the US recession, the sharp decline in the value of the US dollar (commonly used in Nicaragua) and the slowdown of family remittances from Nicaraguans living in the US.
The MRS offers no programmatic proposals for the economy that are distinct from the government's present course — except its notable hostility to the special economic relations the Ortega government has established with revolutionary Venezuela.
Such attacks only lay the basis for the right wing to take the reins. Unlike the MRS, the right-wing forces do have an alternative economic program to that of the government. It is well known, since we have lived its neoliberal nightmare for the last 18 years.
If Ortega is toppled, it is the traditional right, and not the MRS or any other centrist formation, that will come to power.
Mixed record
The Ortega FSLN government is a regime based on a capitalist economy, in a country dominated by imperialism. However, the government also acts in the interests of workers, farmers and producers in some initiatives, and the capitalist investors in others.
It defends the country against the worst depredations of US and European imperialism, and of the traditional oligarchy. It allies Nicaragua with anti-imperialist forces and the movement for Latin American unity.
The government engages in contradictory initiatives conditioned by Nicaragua's position as an impoverished and weak country. A typical example is trying to go both with ALBA and the Central American Free Trade Agreement with the US.
The government also accepts, albeit not without protest, ongoing subservience to International Monetary Fund/World Bank economic policies.
However, the negative aspects of these policies are in harmony with opposition positions. What the opposition fears are any initiatives that push in the direction of a Bolivarian 21st century socialism — as evidenced by their hostility to Venezuela.
Our government is not a dictatorship. In fact, it is often hamstrung by its minority status in the AN. To carry out even a minimal part of its program, it is forced to negotiate with and make concessions to opposition forces.
The government's decision to promote and base itself on the grassroots CPCs was partially vetoed by the pro-oligarchy majority in the assembly. Nevertheless, the government pursued this opening towards more democracy in Nicaragua.
The CPCs allow poor, voiceless and marginalised sectors a say in how the country should be run. Such sectors are also part of "civil society", not just the well-heeled NGO directors. The poor (the chapiollos) are scorned by the schooled elite ensconced in the NGO world — as is the union movement.
There is much to praise in the Ortega government, and a lot that needs to be questioned, criticised, and when necessary, opposed. But the hype about dictatorship only plays into the hands of those who take their lead from La Prensa — which serves as the politburo of the oligarchy and is the mouthpiece for the US embassy.
The anti-government campaign also offers succour to Washington. If successful, the overthrow of Ortega will also strike a blow against revolutionary Cuba and Venezuela, and to the indigenous struggle in Nicaragua — whose main organisation, Sons of Mother Earth (Yatama) is strategically allied to the FSLN.
[Felipe Stuart Cournyer is an FSLN member. Significantly abridged from socialist e-journal Links, http://links.org.au, which also includes other articles on the situation in Nicaragua.]