By Margaret Gleeson
In their final appearance of a one-week tour which included meetings in Melbourne and Brisbane, Nicaraguan FSLN members Alejandro Bendana and Zoilamerica Ortega addressed a meeting of 70 in Sydney on July 12.
Bendana, former general secretary of the Nicaraguan Foreign Affairs Ministry, currently president of the Centre for Peace Studies in Managua and a contributing editor of Links magazine, spoke of the current political and economic situation in Nicaragua, under the heading "Democracy and Peace and the New World Order". The reassessment by the FSLN following its electoral defeat in 1990 and its gearing up for the forthcoming national elections in October were major topics of discussion.
Zoilamerica Ortega, an Executive Council member of the Sandinista Youth, thanked the meeting for its solidarity with the Nicaraguan revolution and commented that whatever the electoral outcome, there is an increasing radicalisation of Nicaraguan youth: a third of the FSLN candidates will be youth candidates (and 50% of candidates will be women)
The tour was organised by the Committees in Solidarity with Latin America and the Caribbean. Over $1200 was raised during the current tour to support FSLN Youth candidates. Further donations can be made to CISLAC. The Sydney phone contact is 690 1977.