End of the Revolution and Present Nicaragua
The United States helped to form the National Opposition Union, and put the popular Violeta Chamorro, the widow of slain La Prensa editor, Pedro Joaquín Chamorro at the head of the party. The FSLN lost to the National Opposition Union by 14 points in elections on February 25, 1990. ABC news had been predicting a 16-point Sandinista victory. However, the toll of the war was just too much, and Nicaraguans decided to take a new direction by voting for Chamorro.
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| Violeta varios de Chamorro |
At the beginning of Violeta Chamorro's nearly 7 years in office the Sandinistas still largely controlled the army, labor unions, and courts. Her government made moves towards consolidating democratic institutions, privatizing state-owned enterprises, and reestablishing relations with the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. These financial institutions began once again to lend money to Nicaragua but only after agreeing to structural adjustment programs that forced Nicaragua to privatize public services such as electricity and telecommunications, cut spending in social services such as education and health care, adopt user fees for both public education and health care, and open markets for foreign investment. The Chamorro government’s use of austerity and structural-adjustment programs reduced or eliminated most government welfare (from the Sandinista period) for Nicaragua’s impoverished citizens, which in turn led to an increase in homelessness and crime.
On October 20, 1996 presidential, legislative, and mayoral elections were held once again and judged free and fair by international observers despite a number of irregularities. This time Nicaraguans elected former-Managua Mayor Arnoldo Alemán, leader of the center-right Liberal Alliance, which later consolidated into the Constitutional Liberal Party (PLC). Alemán continued to privatize the economy. His administration was besieged by charges of corruption, even in the allocation of aid following Hurricane Mitch (1998), which killed several thousand Nicaraguans and left hundreds of thousands homeless. This resulted in the resignation of several key officials in mid-2000. Alemán himself was subsequently convicted of official corruption and sentenced to twenty years in jail. However, Aleman was never forced to spend time behind bars.
In November 2000, Nicaragua held municipal elections. Alemán's PLC won a majority of the overall mayoral races. However, the FSLN fared considerably better in larger urban areas, winning a significant number of departmental capitals, including Managua
While the U.S. had originally supported Aleman, including aid for his presidential election, the widespread corruption of his administration was taking its toll. Historically wealthy families with ties to the U.S. felt that Aleman was negatively impacting their business interests. Therefore, with help from the U.S., Aleman’s vice president Enrique Bolanos (who had better ties to these wealthy families than Aleman) developed a plan to go after Aleman on corruption charges.
Bolanos would run for president in the next elections, and Aleman had situated himself as President of the National Assembly. His plan was to continue to run the country through this position as use Bolanos as a political puppet. However, he was unaware of Bolanos’ plans to target him on corruption charges.
Presidential and legislative elections were held on November 4, 2001, the country's fourth free and fair election since 1990. Enrique Bolaños of the PLC was elected to the Nicaraguan presidency, defeating the FSLN candidate Daniel Ortega, by 14 percentage points. The elections were characterized by international observers as free, fair and peaceful. Bolaños was inaugurated on January 10, 2002.
Soon after Bolaños’s inauguration in January 2002, he called for a “New Era” and for Alemán to be stripped of his immunity so that he could be prosecuted for having stolen some $100 million. The National Assembly narrowly voted to revoke Alemán’s immunity, and he was subsequently convicted and sentenced to 20 years in prison. The penalty was later changed from prison time to house arrest.
President Bolaños left the PLC in 2003, and a three-sided political struggle soon broke out between his new party, the Liberal Party Alliance (PLI), his former party the PLC , and the FSLN. In 2004 the two parties charged that Bolaños had committed electoral crimes during his presidential campaign. In the same year, the National Assembly (dominated by the PLC and the FSLN) passed reforms that further limited the president’s powers. Bolaños vetoed the reforms in April 2005, but Nicaragua’s Supreme Court of Justice upheld them that August. After intervention by the Organization of American States, the three sides finally agreed that the reforms would not take effect until Bolaños’s term ended in January 2007.
In the November 2006 Elections, with the conservative factions of Nicaragua divided between Aleman’s PLC party, and the newly formed PLI, Ortega was able returned to power after 16 years when he defeated PLI candidate Eduardo Montealegre and PLC candidate Jose Rizo. International observers, including the Carter Center, judged the election to be free and fair.
Seeming to have traded the more uncompromising socialism of his past for more-pragmatic politics, Ortega promised to uphold the free-market economic reforms of his predecessors. However, the government focused on the difficult task of stamping out official corruption and improving general economic conditions, particularly for poorer Nicaraguans. Several social programs were started, including “zero hunger,” which gave out farm animals, seeds, fertilizers and training to Nicaragua’s small farmers. National banks were set up to give loans to small farmers and businesses. Through support of Venezuela, who offered an electric plant and an oil refinery, Ortega was able to end the black outs of electricity that had been crippling Nicaragua for several years.
Nicaragua soon became a member of ALBA, the Bolivarian Alliance for our people of America, which is an intergovernmental organization based on the idea of the social, political and economic integration of the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean. The name "Bolivarian" refers to the ideology of Simón Bolívar, the 19th-century South American independence leader born in Caracas who wanted Hispanic America to unite as a single "Great Nation." Founded initially by Cuba and Venezuela in 2004, it is associated with socialist and social democratic governments wishing to consolidate regional economic integration based on a vision of social welfare, bartering and mutual economic aid. The eleven member countries are Antigua and Barbuda, Bolivia, Cuba, Dominica, Ecuador, Grenada, Nicaragua, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines and Venezuela.
Through its membership to ALBA, Nicaragua has enjoyed increased trade and economic growth. The new Sandinista government has had many accomplishments.
The United Nations Development Program (UNDP) presented in Nicaragua on May 19, 2014, its Regional Report on Human Development for 2013-2014 on security matters and classified Nicaragua as “atypical” because of its low rates of homicide and robbery. Juan Pablo Gordillo, adviser on security at the Latin American Regional Services Center of the UNDP, said that, “The case of Nicaragua is an important achievement at the regional level,” adding that because Nicaragua is one of the poorest countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, it breaks the myth that poverty causes violence. Nicaragua’s homicide rate dropped to 8.7 per 100,000 inhabitants. Honduras, with 92 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants, has the highest murder rate in the world. El Salvador has 69, Guatemala 39, Panamá 14.9 and Costa Rica 10.3 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants.
Speaking in San Salvador at a regional conference on community policing, Nicaraguan National Police spokesman Commissioner Fernando Borge said that the proactive, preventative, community policing model of Nicaragua’s police has helped make Nicaragua one of the safest countries in Latin America. He described “a model of shared responsibility, that of person-family-community” which shapesall the areas of police work. In 2013, out of each 100 cases reported to the police, they have been able to resolve 79. This compares to the almost complete impunity for crime, especially politically motivated crime, in Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador.
The problem of the children migrants is blowback from US policy in the 1980s when our government trained and funded Salvadoran and Guatemalan military and police to prevent popular revolutions and more recently when the US supported the coup against President Manuel Zelaya in Honduras. Those countries were left with brutal, corrupt armies and police forces whereas Nicaragua, with its successful 1979 revolution, got rid of Somoza's brutal National Guard and formed a new army and a new police made up of upstanding citizens.
Who consumes all those drugs that arecausing all that violence and corruption in Latin America? Who has militarized the Drug War and is funding and training repressive militaries and police in the countries from which the children are fleeing? In both cases it is the United States.
Respected Latin American polling firm M&R Consultants surveys show at the end of 2013, 72.5% of Nicaraguans approved of government economic management and President Daniel Ortega's personal popularity stands at 74.7%, the most popular in Central America. Why? According to the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), Nicaragua ranks second in Latin America and the Caribbean after Venezuela as the country that most reduced the gap between rich and poor in recent years.
According to the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), Nicaragua’s predicted 2014 GDP growth rate will put it among the five fastest growing countries in Latin America. Why? Because Nicaragua invests in poverty reduction, education and health care.
During the past seven years, agricultural workers income and wages grew, showing the effectiveness of programs for the rural sector, which is where there are higher rates of poverty and malnutrition, and taking away the economic reason for migration.
Nicaragua is the only country in Central America that managed to return to the pace of economic growth that it had before the international crisis of 2008-2009. This not only has been recognized by ECLAC, but also by the International Monetary Fund in its latest assessment. Why? Because the Sandinista government forced the IMF to support its poverty reduction programs, and to like it!.
Nicaragua’s successful poverty reduction programs have caused multilateral agencies and governments to become more interested in the effective implementation of programs that cater to the poor and allow more Nicaraguans to have free access to health and education.
The Vice-President of the World Bank for Latin America, Hasan Tuluy, called projects in Nicaragua one of the best run portfolios of projects in Latin America.
Pablo Mendeville, representative of the UN Development Program (UNDP), has said that Nicaragua is striving to achieve the Millennium Development Goals of social policies to halve global poverty and could achieve this by the end of 2015.
The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has recognized that Nicaragua is among countries that achieved ahead of time the goals set by the Zero Hunger Challenge and lowered the national poverty level. Official data from the Nicaraguan Institute of Development confirm this: in previous years, the level of "poverty was more than 40%; and that of extreme poverty was 17.2%; today we are calculating extreme poverty at 7.6%.".
Nicaragua recorded indisputable achievements in terms of disease prevention and health promotion, with a program of immunization which is an example for Latin America, with coverage as high as one hundred percent in children under one year old, and more than 95 percent in general. It has an effective campaign to prevent 16 serious diseases that can affect the population, such as diarrhea and pneumonia.
The maternal mortality rate of 93 per 100 000 live births in 2006 was lowered to 50 per 100,000 live births in 2013.
Educational programs have resulted in a school retention rate of approximately 96 percent of the students enrolled. In addition, the government achieved 100 percent coverage of students receiving school meals, thus benefiting students of public preschools, community schools, and subsidized Catholic schools throughout the country.
Nicaragua is the country with the most gender equality in Latin America and the Caribbean and tenth worldwide, according to the World Economic Forum (WEF). This means that Nicaragua is one of the countries where women have greater access to health and education, while they have more political participation and economic inclusion, said the study.
In the report Climatescope 2012, Nicaragua won second place after Brazil due to its policy of clean energy, the structure of its energy sector, low-carbon business activity, clean energy value chains, as well as the availability of green credits.
According to the Executive, investments from 2013 to 2016 will raise the national rate of electrification from 76 percent of households to a little over 87 percent, as part of efforts toward economic development with social inclusion. In 2006 electricity supply barely reached 54 percent and there were rolling blackouts averaging 14 hours a day.
The director of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) Jose Graziano da Silva, congratulated the government for the effectiveness of programs implemented against poverty and hunger at the end of a 2013 visit to the country and after visiting various locations to check the value of plans such as Zero Hunger, Family Gardens and the Production Packages, aimed at promoting the development of the agricultural sector and guaranteeing the security of national food consumption.
