Nicaragua News Service October 22 - 28, 1995 Vol. 3, No. 43 Major news stories for the week: 1. New epidemics alarm population and health authorities. 2. Somocistas will be reimbursed for confiscated property. 3. Less money to circulate in December. 4. Women and youth demand more power in next government. 5. Leader in narcotics traffic passed through Nicaragua. 6. Nicaragua has new vice-president. 7. Another candidate announces campaign for Mayor of Managua 8. Tomas Borge's house attacked 9. 5,000 centers needed for FSLN voting. _____________________________________ 1. New epidemics alarm population and health authorities. The main hospital in Leon is filling up with those affected by an unknown ailment whose symptoms are similar to hemorrhagic dengue. The sickness has caused the death of at least 14 people in the last few weeks just in the hospital of Leon. According to hospital doctors, who had been warned by the Ministry of Health (MINSA) not to make public statements, at least 45 new cases are arriving at the Leon hospital every day. The director of the Health Ministry in Leon has ordered a fumigation in the city to kill both rodents and flying insects, given that the origin of the illness is not yet known. From the north of Region II (Leon and Chinandega), the fever has been extending to Region I especially the areas of San Juan de Limay and La Trinidad. The Ministry of Education ordered the indefinite closing of at least 63 rural primary schools in Region I (Esteli, Nueva Segovia, and Madriz). Disease has reached epidemic proportions also in the town of Achuapa (east of Esteli). The illness, however, in that zone is thought to be classic dengue and hemorrhagic dengue. In the last two weeks over 200 cases of hemorrhagic dengue fever have been reported but it was not until four children and two adults died in one day that the current Minister of Health, Federico Munoz, visited the zone to decide whether extraordinary measures had to be taken to control the epidemic. The Minister finally ordered that a type of quarantine be declared around the area. Army medical units are also working to contain the epidemic. The 11,000 inhabitants of Achuapa are basically dedicating all their efforts to caring for their ill and have suspended almost all economic activity. According to Dr. Julio Piura, of the School of Public Health of the Nicaraguan Autonomous University, it is the horrible conditions of life of the majority of Nicaraguans that make it possible for the disease to spread so quickly, despite measures taken by MINSA to control it. The economic conditions of the country make any place ripe for a major epidemiological disaster, stated the doctor. Meanwhile, specialists from Cuba are on their way to help analyze this latest health disaster in Nicaragua. (Barricada, Oct. 26, 27, La Prensa, Oct. 25) 2. Somocistas will be reimbursed for confiscated property. The property stability bill was passed 10 days ago from Commission to the full session of the National Assembly for discussion. (The vote reported last week of 59 votes in favor and 19 against was for the bill "in general," a vote that does not exist in many legislative systems.) This week around 10 of the first articles of the bill were passed, including one that guaranteed property rights to those who benefited from Laws 85 and 86 of 1990. The certificate given by the Office of Territorial Ordering (OOT) now has a definite legal value. Land and houses given to ex-Army and ex-Resistance soldiers were also legalized. Somoza allies, however, who were confiscated under Decree number 38, will be able to reclaim their properties or be reimbursed based on the approval of article number 11 of the new law. Those affected by Decree 38 and who have not yet introduced a claim will have 90 days to do so after the law goes into effect. (Barricada, Oct. 26,) 3. Less money to circulate in December. Minister of Finance Emilio Pereira admitted last week that the government will be taking measures to more strictly control the amount of money in circulation within the next few months. Pereira was responding to statements made last week by the economist Alejandro Martinez Cuenca. Martinez Cuenca, in giving his analysis of one year of the IMF ESAF agreements, warned that the agreement between the lending institution and the government would lead to a drastic cutback in liquidity which would worsen the problems of poverty within the next few months. Another economist, Nestor Avendano, warned that the public savings program demanded by the World Bank has actually been converted into an anti-savings program because of the massive debts owed to the National Development Bank, the Nicaraguan Energy Company and the money paid to service the foreign debt. Avendano also warned that the international reserves of the country were at an all-time low. (Barricada, Oct. 27) 4. Women and youth demand more power in next government. A minimum of 30% of all political party slates for the coming national and local elections should be composed of young women and men candidates, according to leaders of the National Youth Council, which met last week at the Poli-Technical University of Nicaragua. (The National Youth Council is made up of 50 youth organizations of all types, political, ecumenical, student, etc.) The meeting was promoted by the Martin Luther King Institute of the university which sponsored a forum on Youth and Political Participation, part of their program on Conflict and Peace. A recent survey tried to find out about what young people were thinking with relation to the coming elections. The survey showed that young people have little confidence in today's political parties and political leaders because "they have been incapable of putting together proposals which would change the situation of ungovernability that we have been facing for so long". The young people in the forum talked of "depolitizing politics, and politicizing the political parties" in order to make politics fit a definition of the art of "what is possible" to deal with the principal problems of the country. Proposals brought forward during the meeting included active participation of young people in the process of formulating and implementing community activities and national policy vis a vis youth and children. (Barricada, Oct. 27) 5. Leader in narcotics traffic passed through Nicaragua One of the people transported in the kidnapped La Costena airplane that was hi-jacked a couple of months ago to Colombia and where the pilot was later murdered was said to be the chief of the Cali drug cartel, Miguel Rodriguez Orejuela, who had been hidden for the preceding five months in Heredia, Costa Rica, before entering Nicaragua to escape on the La Costena plane to Colombia from the island of Ometepe. This information was published in the Costa Rican newspaper "Al Dia." According to local papers, the Cali chief is about to give himself up to Colombian authorities. (Barricada, Oct. 24) 6. Nicaragua has new vice-president Nicaragua is now the only country in the world which is governed by a woman president and a woman vice president. Following the recent resignation of Vice-President Virgilio Godoy (in order to be legally eligible to run for office in next year's elections) the National Assembly voted to name a school teacher and member of the Assembly's executive committee, Julia Mena, of the Liberal Independent Party (PLI), the new vice-president of the Republic. Forty-four members of the Assembly, from six different political parties, including the FSLN and MRS, voted for Mena. No one was more surprised than Mena herself. President Chamorro had wanted Fernando Rojas Zelaya of the "National Project" political group, to be voted vice-president. According to rumors, Chamorro then would have resigned from the Presidency leaving Rojas, an unconditional supporter of her son in law, Antonio Lcayo, in power. Lacayo, then, by not having his mother-in-law in the presidency would then not be constitutionally prohibited from running himself for the Presidency next year. That plan, however, backfired with the election by the National Assembly of Mena, who, however, will now not be able to run for public office herself in 1996. Mena is from a poor family in Granada and is 45 years old. Upon hearing of her election, she gave public thanks to her widowed mother for having sacrificed herself to help her 5 children obtain an education. Mena's mother was a tortilla maker who lived to see all her children become professionals in the decade of the 80os. Mena is a school teacher by profession and was once named the best primary teacher of the country. After working in the Sandinista Ministry of Education as Director of Personnel, she received a UNESCO scholarship to get a Masters degree in Public Administration in Mexico. In 1983 she began to participate actively in the PLI and in 1989 won a seat in the Nicaraguan legislature. Earlier this year she was elected First Vice-President of the National Assembly. (Barricada, October 23, El Nuevo Diario, Oct. 25) 7. Another candidate announces for Mayor of Managua Pedro Solorzano, a popular local businessman most famous for his organizing and sponsoring the now famous "Ben Hur" races every year in Managua, has declared himself interested in running for mayor of the city of Managua. Solorzano is not affiliated with any political party and would run, at least as of now, as an independent candidate. Solorzano stated that he initially did not want to run but changed his mind due to the number of people that have suggested he run. He promised that as mayor of Managua he would declare an unconditional war against poverty and make Managua the best capital in Central America. 8. Tomas Borge's house attacked. FSLN founder Tomas Borge and his family were attacked last week when two unidentified subjects in a dark-colored car sprayed their house with machine gun fire last Tuesday at midnight. It is assumed that one of the attackers was hit by Borge's bodyguards who were protecting his house. Borge lives in the Bello Horizonte section of eastern Managua. The FSLN released a communique in which they condemned the attack on Borge's house and associated it with the increasing wave of terrorism under which the country is now living. This was a reference to the numerous bombings of Catholic Churches in the last six months by still unidentified persons. (Barricada, Oct. 25) 9. 5,000 centers needed for FSLN voting. The FSLN announced last week that all party candidates for electoral office will be submitted for popular approval, and that as such it will be "the only political party that will let all Nicaraguans participate in candidate selection." According to the secretary of the FSLN National Electoral Commission, Jose Luis Villavicencio, the primary voting will take place at 5000 established voting centers, of which 2,119 will be located in the district of Managua. In the next elections, over 643,533 people will be eligible to vote. In order to be a candidate for the FSLN, one must be Nicaraguan, 21 years of age and have been born or lived in the area that you want to represent for at least two years. Over 60 people will be chosen to run for the National Assembly from their regions with 60 others to run as their replacements. There will be twenty others who, based on recent amendments to the Constitution, will run at large or nationally. Candidates must then be ratified by the Sandinista Assembly. The Assembly must also ratify any proposal for electoral alliances. (Barricada, October 26)