[The Nicaragua News Service is a subscription-only service. If you are receiving this without paying for a subscription, and would like to continue receiving the News Service, please send a check for $60 to Nicaragua Network, 1247 “E” St. SE, Washington, DC 20003. Specify e-mail or postal service. If you do have a subscription to the Nicaragua News Service, do not forward it to lists. If you cite the News Service, please give full credit. The weekly Nicaragua Network Hotline is free and can be subscribed to by sending an e-mail to nicanet-hotline-on@afgj.org.] Nicaragua News Service A Service of the Nicaragua Network Volume 12, Number 10 March 1 -7, 2004 By Paul Baker Hernández 1. CAFTA Masks Hidden Water Privatization 2. Massive Rise in Violence Against Women Recorded 3. Launch of Sandinista "Reform from Within" Movement 4. Another Suspect Bolaños Election Account Surfaces 5. PLC Hoist With Aleman Petard 6. Methane Project from Garbage Ready to Go 7. US Consortium Wins Bid for East-West Fiber Optic Link 8. Banana Workers Update _____________________________________________________________________________________ 1. CAFTA Masks Hidden Water Privatization Carlos Pacheco, Executive Director of the Center for International Studies (CEI) and board member of the National Consumers’ Defense Network, warned that many of Nicaragua’s potable water systems were undergoing a process of “hidden privatization.” In a sharply-worded challenge to the government’s much-vaunted transparency, Pacheco claimed that in fact the Bolaños administration had entered into secret agreements with the US during negotiations for the recently-signed Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA). These clauses, now written into the final CAFTA document, would require the authorities of rather more than one third (56) of Nicaragua’s municipalities to open the management of their water systems to bidding by transnational companies. Pacheco said that not only did this literally sell out a vital resource from under the very feet of the Nicaraguan people by turning it into a commercial commodity like any other, but the deal also violated the basic right of each municipality to its hallowed autonomy from central government - its legal right to decide its own affairs for itself. He said that the situation was so far advanced that these water systems could be found already listed on the web-page of the United States Trade Representative (www.ustr.gov Annex 9.1, p. 37). Numerous other services must be open to international bids under CAFTA, as well, Pacheco stated. The CAFTA document, signed by the Central American presidents in December, 2003, and January this year, will shortly be signed by the US and Central American Presidents. It will then come up for approval by the legislatures of the six countries. Both CEI and the Consumers’ Network have been in the forefront of the battle to prevent its original signing by the region's trade ministers and are deeply committed to resisting its ratification, precisely on the grounds that it discriminates unfairly against the impoverished majorities of the region. Nicaraguan Commerce Minister Mario Arana affirmed that Nicaragua’s water was not being - and would not be - privatized, and that he was personally opposed to any such privatization. But, Pacheco noted, CAFTA will be subordinate to the rules of the World Trade Organization and WTO rules expressly include water as a commercial good. Pacheco also noted that while management of Nicaragua’s water resources was up for grabs via the US government’s web-page, the municipalities concerned did not even appear on any official Nicaraguan government site, not even that of the Ministry of Industry and Commerce. (El Nuevo Diario, 2 March) 2. Massive Rise in Violence Against Women Recorded According to figures presented by the national office of Women and Children's Police Stations, 2003 saw a 35% rise in recorded cases of abuse against these most vulnerable sectors of the population. The most commonly registered acts were rape and attempted rape, incest and kidnapping, together with enforced fondling and other unwanted attention. Young girls emerged as the group most commonly abused, particularly within the context of intra-family violence. The findings were made public during the first session of the National Commission of the Struggle against Violence, and served as a grim backdrop to a women's demonstration held in preparation for Women's Day on March 8, demanding to know, "What has happened to your famous 'New Era', President Bolaños?" However, grim as the statistics were, Sub-Commissioner Jacqueline Sanchez, the police stations' national chief, took the occasion to point out that the apparent huge increase in crimes against women did not necessarily reflect a direct rise in terms of strict quantity. Rather she argued that each year more and more women and girls were plucking up their courage and reporting abuses suffered, whether within their families or from strangers, thus "breaking the silence" that has traditionally protected the abusers. "Certainly there are more cases of violence, that's clear," she said, "but this enormous rise of 35% has several other explanations. In the first place, women nowadays are more aware of the severe damage that these acts of violence, mostly perpetrated by men, cause within their own lives and the lives of their daughters; and, secondly, it reflects the successful work of reaching out to victims which the National Police has been carrying out through the 23 women's offices we now have at a national level." She continued by saying that the highest proportion of cases of intra-family violence within the home occurred between couples, with the primary victims being women between the ages of 18 - 35. Unsurprisingly, the numbers showed that Managua, by far Nicaragua's largest city, had the most cases of violence, followed by León and Masaya. At the other end of the scale, the North Atlantic Autonomous Region and the southern city of Granada registered the lowest levels of abuse. (La Prensa, 6 March) 3. Launch of Sandinista "Reform from Within" Movement No doubt with at least half an eye on history, when, in 1990, amid the jetsam of the Front's electoral loss to the US-backed Violeta Chamorro, Daniel Ortega swore that the FSLN would "govern from below," a group of leading Sandinistas announced the launching of their "reform from within" movement. At the press conference called to explain the aims and goals of the movement, their primary spokespersons were Alejandro Martinez Cuenca, flanked by retired general Hugo Torres and former comandante Victor Manuel Tirado López. Martínez Cuenca, an economist who served as Finance Minister within the '80s Sandinista government, has already distinguished himself within recent Nicaraguan political life by standing against Ortega for the Front's presidential candidacy in the primary elections of 2001. Despite his long saga of public service, however, he, like his two companions, is quiet and retiring, rarely making public waves. On this occasion, though, the three lost no time in making their position clear, calling emphatically for serious change within the Sandinista Party and the sooner the better. They directly criticized the country's political leaders, especially those of the two major parties, the FSLN and Alemán's Liberal Constitutionalists, saying that in their concern to protect their party quotas, they disregarded the national good, forgetting that, as political forces, they were important bases for the construction of institutional democracy. "Each of them in turn," Martínez averred, "arrives at the same quasi-Messianic and myopic conclusion: that the interests of the nation converge pretty much exactly with those of his own particular person." The three men maintained that Nicaragua is suffering from a serious power vacuum, and that this had to be confronted and surmounted rather than continuing to drift along, complacently believing that all was in fact well. They used the occasion to launch a document entitled, "Nicaragua: Country in Crisis." It puts forward their case that, because the country is constantly subjected to the whims and fancies of the "caudillos" (strong men) of the main parties, the vicious circle of crisis is maintained and made more acute, so undermining Nicaragua's very integrity as a nation. Martinez said he and his colleagues were committed to working within the spaces that were in fact permitted within the FSLN, since the first step had to be a process of reflection and transformation "within our own house." They emphasized that, while they were critical of the Sandinista political leadership in particular, they were equally so of all political tendencies as manifested in the present day, instancing the way in which the PLC was prepared to bring the legislature to an abrupt and open-ended stop to achieve the release of Alemán, despite his having been tried and convicted of serious crimes against the state. They roundly condemned the recent murder of former FSLN leader and journalist Carlos Guadamuz, castigating the leadership for apparently defending the crime. "Likewise, it is completely unacceptable that they level threats against men and women of the press who happen to think differently from themselves." In response, FSLN insider Bayardo Arce dismissed the new movement, saying, "No new currents exist within the FSLN. This is not to say there aren't actually hundreds of different currents of thought within our party. We're proud of this. It would be horrible if 400,000 party militants all thought exactly alike. That would make us a party of robots." Dr. Gustavo Porras, General Secretary of Health Workers' Union and a fellow member of the National Assembly, declared flatly that Martínez Cuenca was a political opportunist, taking advantage of the present situation to lay the ground for his own renewed candidacy for the presidency. "The spaces have always been there within the party," he concluded, "But they never took advantage of them." (El Nuevo Diario, La Prensa, Channel 2, 8 TV, 5 March) 4. Another Suspect Bolaños Election Account Surfaces For all the emphasis on the criminal activities of Arnoldo Alemán and his cronies, the issue of the misuse of funds by the Bolaños election campaign continues to simmer away just below the surface. To date, reporters had unearthed two mysterious bank accounts, recording between them a total of close to US$10 million. This week, El Nuevo Diario staff tracked down yet a third, this time apparently providing another US$2 million. All 40 deposits to the account were made during the period July - December, 2001; they took the form of checks, cash, bank transfers and even credit notes, which, at that time, had been banned by the Controller-General's office. The account had three signatories, one of them being then-presidential candidate, Enrique Bolaños. While the former accounts discovered revealed almost no identities of the depositors, in this last case, only 8 of the 40 were unidentified. However, of the remainder, practically all were in the names of the account holders, a fact that elicited the curious response from the PLC sources that Bolaños and the others had received donations from unidentified sources, entering them in the account under their own names to avoid having to reveal the identity of the actual donors. To date, President Bolaños has offered no explanation as to the provenance of the funds in any of the three accounts, nor made any other commentary on the matter. For the Comptroller's Office, Luis Angel Montenegro stated bluntly that the banks concerned, Caley Dagnall and the Bank of Production, were simply lying when they asserted that they did not know the identity of the depositors concerned. "A standard procedure has been in place concerning the reception of deposits since 1979," he said. "Using it, there is no possibility that the banks would not know the name of the person or persons making these deposits. When some bank official maintains that s/he does not know their names, that person is simply lying. There's no way a bank would not know who came in to deposit checks to the order of half a million dollars or 13.5 million córdobas." Montenegro also claimed that, by law, any deposit of more than US$10,000 had to be reported to, and recorded by, the Bank Superintendent, together with its source of origin. "The Superintendent of Banks is obliged to give us the information he promised us," he concluded. "To whit, he must provide us with a complete list of all donors relating to our ongoing investigation into electoral abuse." To date, he noted, neither the Superintendent nor the banks concerned had been prepared to furnish the required information. (El Nuevo Diario, 3 March) 5. PLC Hoist With Alemán Petard The Constitutional Liberal (PLC) members of the National Assembly found themselves outmaneuvered by the Sandinista Front and the Bolaños Blue and White Liberals in their attempt to force a pardon for their jailed leader, Arnoldo Alemán, through the legislature. After days of chaos, during which the Assembly was effectively paralyzed as the PLC-controlled leadership body seemed determined to resist all efforts to prevent the amnesty measure being thrown out no matter what the cost, a frontal assault using Alemán himself as the key factor, finally turned the tables. Essentially the initiative consisted in renewed threats to remove the former president from his luxury home-jail in his ranch just outside Managua, and consign him to the far less salubrious environment of the so-called Model Prison in Tipitapa. The tactic worked. Within hours of the move being suggested, the PLC leaders caved in, withdrawing from their efforts to get the amnesty back before the legislature. In further gains, the long-drawn out paralysis inflicted on the Supreme Court by similar PLC hostage measures, looked also to have been overcome. In consequence, by next week, it is expected that the election of the court's president and vice-president will be allowed to go forward, with the FSLN magistrate, Yadira Centeno, almost certain to land the top job. However, despite the apparent breakthrough, one of Centeno's fellow-Sandinistas on the court, Rafael Solis, warned that a last-ditch attempt by the PLC to condition the election on the freeing of Alemán could not be ruled out. He stressed the negative effect on the court and on the country's justice system if the politicians continued to link the Alemán issue with the election. "Sometimes there are other elements that are at work," he said, "setting up situations which really have nothing to do with the court. The crisis in the National Assembly is one of these - it has nothing to do with the court as such. I trust no-one will try to link them up again before the coming vote." For her part, Judge Juana Méndez, who has often been accused of vindictiveness towards Alemán in her judgements bringing him to book, said that no-one had brought the issue of his being moved to the prison before her. "It appears there have been rumors that such a measure was to be brought forward," she said. "Maybe it was laid before the Appeals Court. Even if this were so, it would also have to be coordinated with my court to become effective." (La Prensa, 6 March) 6. Methane Project from Garbage Ready to Go Dr. Edgardo Cuaresma, Managua's municipal environmental chief, recognized that the bio-energy project designed to generate and capture methane gas for energy production from the monstrous city garbage dump known as La Chureca was almost ready to go. La Chureca sits like an enormous running sore on the very shores of Lago Xolotlán (Lake Managua), and is estimated to contain some five million tons of untreated garbage, accumulated in a continuous process since 1975. There has been an increasing number of studies made in the recent past as to the viability of producing energy from this wasteland, with the most recent, conducted by the National Engineering University, finding that, once on-line, La Chureca will produce enough energy to power approximately 50,000 homes with average energy use (four bulbs, one TV, one radio). Project president Fernandolino Narvaez said that some 60 holes will be opened up in the surface of the pit, to introduce the tubes through which the methane gas will rise to the surface. These gas wells will be interconnected, exactly as are those which carry ordinary coal gas, and the resultant flow of methane will be introduced into four generators, each capable of producing one megavolt. Dr. Narvaez stressed that this level of output would save Nicaragua 58,000 barrels of oil per year, so releasing roughly US$2 million over the same period for investment in education, health and other necessities of the population at large. He also pointed out that the project would have major environmental benefits, not just for Nicaragua but for the whole planet, in that, by cutting down the country's reliance on carbon-based fuels, the methane generators would assist in reducing damage to the atmosphere. Recent studies by the health ministry have shown a virtual epidemic of respiratory infirmities said to be related to climate change. As a final flourish, an integral part of the program is to re-forest the entire area of the dump, which spreads over tens if not hundreds of acres. "La Chureca will become one enormous arboretum," Narvaez concluded. "There we will plant individuals from all the many trees which grow and flourish in Nicaragua." The project team members are hopeful that they will receive support from both the Central American Bank for Economic Integration and the World Bank. Both bodies have already expressed a serious interest. And they expect the environmental impact studies to be completed by the end of the month. "After that," said one presenter, "all we'll need is for the municipality to give us the green light." (El Nuevo Diario, 3 March) 7. US Consortium Wins Bid for East-West Fiber Optic Link The capital, Managua, and Bluefields, principal city of the South Atlantic Autonomous Region, will probably be linked by fiber optic cable by the end of 2004. A US consortium was awarded the contract to undertake such a project after bidding was opened by the Nicaraguan National Energy Transmission Company (ENTRESA). The consortium, known only by the initials, ABB, actually offered a somewhat higher price than the communications giant, Siemens, but the latter's offer “did not meet some of the fundamental guidelines we had established,” according to Entresa president, Humberto Salvo. “It’s a pity, because the price they (Siemens) offered was very good; but we had to disqualify them since their proposal had failed to meet several of the conditions we had laid out in the project specification.” In the end, the ABB bid came in at US$4,321,000, with a discount clause of 21.4% and a project completion time of 237 days, taking completion just to year’s end. By contrast, Siemens had offered US$3,977,000, with a completion time of 240 days, and a global discount of 7.5%. How the company in fact failed to meet the bid requirements was not disclosed. Salvo explained that the project involved the substitution of the old cross-country electric cable with its modern equivalent, a fusing of power cable and fiber optic line, the latter capable of carrying an up-to-the-minute phone service with all its communication possibilities: phone, internet, sound and vision. This higher capacity will mean that the new cross-country line would be able to connect directly to the international cable, known as Arco 1. “Now,” said a jubilant Salvo, “it only requires the final signatures to be put to the contract for the work to get under way. We should be done in 8 months, by the end of this current year.” (La Prensa, 6 March) 8. Banana Workers Update This week saw the banana workers suffering from the ill-effects of the US-produced and banned pesticide Nemagon, camped out in front of the National Assembly since February 10, maintaining their vigil and their determination to deal only with President Bolaños himself in settling their grievances. Continuing to protest pacifically and within their predominantly Christian tradition, they followed up last week's visit to Cardinal Obando y Bravo with a city-center Way of the Cross, carrying wooden crucifixes through Managua's main thoroughfares in a liturgically approximate imitation of the suffering endured by Christ on the way to his Good Friday death on Golgotha. In addition, the divisions which last week seemed to be threatening to split the workers down the middle were resolved by negotiation. As a result, Monday 8 March is expected to see another contingent of between 3 and 4,000 sufferers come in from Chinandega to join forces with those already living in the camp. Despite all this, Bolaños remained as elusive as ever, continuing to point the workers towards the commission he established to consider their grievances, while his secretary pleaded his "extremely busy schedule" to explain the impossibility of setting a date for a face-to-face meeting with him. However, one new banner is now on prominent display just opposite the main entrance to the legislature, bearing a legend which, if true, may well go a long way to explain the president's somewhat puzzling reluctance to join virtually the whole of the rest of Nicaraguan society in supporting the workers and condemning Dole, Dow and the rest. The banner reads bluntly: "Mr. President, you used to be an executive for Monsanto; now you're just playing the saint (santo in Spanish)." (El Nuevo Diario, La Prensa, Radio La Primerisima, Channel 2, 4, 8, 12 TV, passim, and from Nicaragua Network's own correspondent) The Nicaragua Network web page is www.nicanet.org.