Nicaragua -- Citizens Make Their Own Choices
International Meddling Continues to Backfire on Bush
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The United States needs a completely new foreign policy -- one that obeys the law, and does not kill or torture people. Other countries manage to do that, why don't we? This article was made available through the news service of Foreign Policy in Focus. Foreign Policy in Focus has kindly granted us permission to share top articles with the readers of the Progress Report. |
by Nadia Martinez
For the Bush administration, it wasn't just the U.S. elections that brought bad news recently. Citizens of Nicaragua voted Nov. 5 to return former President Daniel Ortega to power.In what seems like a case of Cold War blues, U.S. officials had unsuccessfully attempted to sway the elections in favor of Mr. Ortega's opponents. The meddling backfired, however.
Nicaragua, a country ravaged by decades of dictatorship and civil war, is second only to Haiti as the poorest country in Latin America and the Caribbean. With almost 80% of its population living in poverty, it is hardly a threat to American security interests. And yet right-wing pundits, engaging in outdated and unfounded predictions of democratic regression, went to great lengths to intervene in Nicaragua's election process and prevent a victory by Mr. Ortega's Sandinista Party.
Mr. Ortega was a leader of the revolutionary movement against the prolonged and brutal Somoza dictatorship, and he ruled Nicaragua in the midst of a war against the U.S.-backed contra rebels. Since losing the elections in 1990, he has been the target of accusations -- from corruption and abuse of power as a member of Nicaragua's legislative assembly, to sexual abuse by his stepdaughter. But Nicaraguan voters were willing to give Mr. Ortega another chance.
While the Bush administration has managed to keep surprisingly quiet in this year's dozen or so other Latin American elections, U.S. officials, including Ambassador to Nicaragua Paul Trivelli and Secretary of Commerce Carlos Gutierrez, made direct and official interventions, including public threats of reprisals if Nicaraguans voted for Mr. Ortega.
As election day drew near and Mr. Ortega remained the favorite in the polls, Republican members of Congress stepped up the pressure by threatening to cut off aid and block the millions in remittances that legal immigrants living in the United States legally send to their poor families in Nicaragua every year.
Nicaraguans are all too familiar with U.S. economic embargoes and military bullying. They experienced both during the 1980s, the last time the Sandinistas were in the presidency. This time around, voters didn't budge.
With Mr. Ortega in power, Nicaragua joins the ranks of countries in Latin America whose voters are using the power of democracy to show political leaders their discontent with their governments' corporate-friendly, corrupt, so-called free-trade policies.
Latin Americans from Bolivia to Argentina are electing politicians who have been critical of so-called free-market reforms, and are promising more socially focused government programs that help the poor.
The Bush administration should take the Nicaraguan election as an opportunity to rethink its policies toward Latin America.
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Nadia Martinez is co-director of the Sustainable Energy and Economy Network, a project of the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington.
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Also see: The Peruvian Presidential Election
Bolivia's Evo Morales Could Shift the Hemispheric Balance of Power
Poor Countries Can Have Smart Policies |
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