According to the New York Times, the Bush Administration is implementing a “concerted effort” to block the return of the “left-wing” Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) party to power in Nicaragua. This is standard U.S. practice, of course, but in this case, Washington may be misreading the situation. Like many other analysts, the U.S. Embassy in Managua believes that Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega will retain control over the party and the streets for a long time to come. Ortega remains untrustworthy to Washington, despite his continuous good behavior interspersed with occasional anti-U.S. rhetoric. The FSLN has only ambiguously opposed the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) and the government’s neoliberal policies.
Washington’s insistence that the Nicaraguan Army destroy its remaining Soviet Surface to Air Missiles (SAM-7s) is clearly linked to the possibility that Ortega may become president and commander in chief. During an official trip to Latin America last March, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld described the Nicaraguan Army’s 1,051 SAM-7 missiles as “a threat, a danger. For terrorists who are anxious to kill people, a SAM-7 missile is a very attractive weapon.”
Back in Nicaragua, small-scale turbulence reigned throughout April. The government in Managua authorized higher bus fares because of the steep rise in oil prices and the threat of a strike by the private transport sector if the fares were not approved. Students in the capital city, however, took to the streets to protest the higher fares as a means, they said, of forcing the government to deal seriously with the energy and transport problem—something it has not yet done.
The problem, of course, is not simply one of global oil prices but rather the politics of budgetary decision-making. Commitments to the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, and the related string of conditionalities, have pushed an already neoliberal government to put debt repayment and cuts in public expenditures ahead of social demands. A cut in sales taxes on fuel, for example, might have defused or prevented the chaos on Managua’s streets, but the government refused even this relatively minor policy adjustment out of fear of risking even greater IMF displeasure at the violation of “orthodox” fiscal policies.
Political leaders have buried their heads in the sand, preferring not to take sides. FSLN tactics have reverted to supporting and even instigating the protests, but less out of social sympathies than as an opportunity to extract further political and bureaucratic concessions from the government. But now, a challenge to the rather instrumentalist approach of the FSLN towards protests is on the horizon. This challenge has taken the form of Herty Lewites, the former mayor of Managua, who has proclaimed that he intends to campaign for the FSLN leadership and the ensuing presidential nomination.
Lewites, a longstanding FSLN member and one-time close collaborator of Daniel Ortega, the perennial candidate and party Secretary General, has managed to marshal considerable support among Sandinistas and non-Sandinistas alike. Unlike the challenge posed to Ortega’s leadership by former Vice President Sergio Ramírez a decade earlier, Lewites refuses to take his aspirations outside the party machinery. That earlier experience, of which Lewites was a part, proved an electoral fiasco, garnering pathetically low voter support.
Riding on favorable reviews for his stint as mayor of Managua—with no effort spared for media attention—the jovial Lewites has skyrocketed in public opinion polls considerably ahead of the FSLN strongman, Ortega. But inside the party machinery—tightly controlled by Ortega and his allies—the story has been different. At the rump party congress, Lewites along with his supporters, among them prominent Sandinista leaders, demanded an open primary to choose the party’s presidential candidate. In response, the party “discharged” Lewites and some of his key supporters, including disgruntled former FSLN leaders, while outside the convention hall pro-Lewites demonstrators were met with a barrage of stones.
Lewites’ challenge to Ortega is not ideological. A proponent of private sector development and a prosperous businessman himself, Lewites belongs to the sector of the party right that is comfortable with an Ortega leadership that talks left but acts right. However, it is Lewites’ call to take the battle to the streets that represents the most serious challenge in two decades to Ortega’s stranglehold on the Party. The call to democratize the Sandinista Party cannot be separated from the need to democratize Nicaragua. Thus, members of the Sandinista left are supporting him in the hope that he will break Ortega’s iron grip on the party and open up the possibility of the party’s eventual return to revolutionary principles, that is, after Lewites himself is gone.
Lewites can appeal to rank-and-file Sandinistas who along with non-Sandinistas and the mass media are fed up with the Liberal-FSLN lock on Nicaragua’s chief political institutions and the increasingly powerless presidency. For the first time since the Sandinistas came to power 26 years ago, both conservative and anti-Sandinista voters are entertaining the idea of supporting an FSLN candidate.
While some Lewites supporters are urging him to run as an independent, his principal strategy is to foment a revolt among Sandinista bases against the rigid leadership of four-time presidential candidate Ortega. Polls show support for Ortega has declined to 31% while Lewites enjoys a 59% approval rating. Analysts point to a connection between the rise in support for the FSLN—as evidenced by the party’s sweeping victory in last October’s municipal elections—and the enthusiasm being generated by the potential candidacy of Lewites, the most popular political figure in Nicaragua. Both phenomena evidence the importance of local leadership qualities.
But it is Lewites’ decision to take his proposed candidacy to the streets that poses a direct challenge to Ortega’s pretension to control base-level street mobilization, which is the FSLN’s historic ace in the hole, normally a card only played or withdrawn at Ortega’s behest. The FSLN has been finding it more difficult to have its cake (control mass demonstrations) and eat it too (enjoy official political spaces). Lewites crystallizes the contention between the two poles, but the contention also stems from structural determinants such as the increased cost of living and the government’s export-oriented free trade model, both of which continue to wreak havoc on the majority of Nicaraguans.
A Lewites candidacy could largely neutralize Washington’s opposition to the FSLN’s presidential aspirations. The Bush Administration would no doubt find Lewites to be a good business partner. In Lewites, Washington would have a Nicaraguan president fully in control of the ruling party and a government committed to an economic partnership. But Lewites’ attempts to drum up support by taking it to the streets could backfire: it threatens to upset both Washington and the Nicaraguan economic establishment. If those electoral street dynamics join the socioeconomic protests, then Nicaragua’s neoliberal status quo could be in danger.
About the author
Alejandro Bendaña is founder and president of the Center for International Studies in Managua. He served as the Nicaraguan Ambassador to the UN (1981-1982) and as Secretary General of the Nicaraguan Foreign Ministry (1984-1990).
