"Don't interfere" in Nicaragua vote, OAS tells U.S.

[cal04]

Election monitors from the Organisation of American states told Washington on Saturday not to meddle in Nicaragua's presidential election, which polls show Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega could win.

The OAS said remarks this week by U.S. Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez and Ambassador Paul Trivelli on their concerns about an Ortega win ran counter to its plea in September for foreign governments not to intervene in the November 5 vote.

"Given the separate declarations by Carlos Gutierrez and Paul Trivelli about the Nicaraguan electoral contest, the OAS Mission feels obliged to reiterate the spirit and the text of the aforementioned declaration," the OAS said.

Two opinion polls this week gave Ortega -- whose Sandinista government fought a bruising civil war through the 1980s against U.S.-backed Contra rebels -- a strong enough lead to win the election in one round.

http://news.scotsman.com/latest.cfm?id=1564412006

[burrowowl]

1. And the US of A is going to listen?

In 1956, Guatemala elected a democratic government and United Fruit got upset and guess what happened?
Raygun or Geogre Bush I killed at least 200,000 Guatemalean Native Americans and people on DU still think it was better then!??!!?
Read Howard Zinn: A People's History of the United States.
What I have stated above, I have personnal and familial knowledge there of!

[Peace Patriot]

4. Hey, Burrowowl! Yikes, DUers think it was better then? Sometimes the

ignorance at DU amazes me--but it's an open forum, and I have seen a willingness to learn--so don't give up! Just keep patiently pointing out the facts. Most DUers will be responsive--and those who aren't are often not real progressives, just fake posters with "agendas."

The OAS has done miracles on transparent elections elsewhere in Latin America (with the exception of Mexico). I'm so glad they are speaking up. It's not 1956 any more. The trend is overwhelmingly democratic and leftist throughout South America--in Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Paraguay (some probs there, though--Bush land grab, did you hear about that?), Venezuela and Bolivia. Soon (this year) in Ecuador, too (the leftist is way ahead). And next election cycle, Peru. Then there is the huge leftist rebellion in south Mexico (centered in Oaxaca) and in Mexico City. (The Fox/Calderones can't use brute force in Oaxaca--hopefully not--because it's a peaceful rebellion led by the teachers union and has millions of supporters--and Mexico would explode if they did; so they have to compromise.)

Anyway, the OAS has a lot of clout--and the Bushites have almost none--in Latin America. (They are pretty much confined to killing poor peasants and leftists in Columbia, but this Bush 100,000 acres in Paraguay, near the Bolivian border, complete with nearby US military airstrip and manueverings, is worrisome.)

This is pretty bold of the OAS, telling the Bush Junta "hands off!". I don't think they'd say it, if they didn't feel on fairly secure ground. What an amazing development, eh? Daniel Ortega!

[Peace Patriot]

5. See this thread on the Bush/Paraguay situation:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x2897858

[arewenotdemo]

7. People forgot just what a bloody war criminal Reagan was

Personally, I detested him even more than I do the Cheerleader.

Reagan was actually nauseating to see and listen to.

[Peace Patriot]

10. I agree. I met him once, had to introduce him as a speaker in a

political forum in college, before he was governor. He was not a well known political figure at that time, just an actor stumping for the Republicans. I had the most uncanny hit of revulsion being near him. Something I've never experienced with any other human being. It surprised and shocked me, and I thought about it for a long time, but I still don't understand it.

Perhaps it was the screams of the tortured, and the agonies of the dyng in Nicaragua that somehow touched me from the future.

[Judi Lynn]

14. Amazing! You met someone who was completely dead inside.

He's just the kind of person right-wingers would worship as their most notable politician.

Don't forget he also shares responsibility for a lot of tortured, bludgeoned, hacked-to-death Guatemalan villagers he helped his good friend Efraín Ríos Montt slaughter:

~snip~
The 14 months of Ríos Montt's rule become the bloodiest in Guatemala's history since the invasion of the country by the Spanish some 400 years earlier. Mayans suspected of sympathising with the guerillas suffer mass killings and atrocities, including the rape of women and girls, and the widespread use of torture. Over 400 Mayan villages are razed. Crops and livestock are destroyed. The insurgency is contained but with a tragic human cost.

As the terror reigns, Ríos Montt broadcasts weekly sermons on morality. His regime and policies are supported by the US Government and US-based, right-wing religious groups. US President Ronald Reagan is reported as saying that Ríos Montt is "a man of great personal integrity" who is "getting a bum rap on human rights".
(snip)

http://www.moreorless.au.com/killers/montt.html

[arewenotdemo]

18. that's very interesting, Peace Patriot

Your intuition of it, no doubt.

Similar in a way to what it must have been like to encounter the martyrdom-bound Mohammed Atta.

A skin-crawling experience.

[Zensea]

8. Also read "Inevitable Revolutions" by Walter LaFeber

Quite detailed description of this written 20 years ago.

[Ken Burch]

9. Actually, that was 1954, but you got the rest right.

nt.

[upi402]

11. Salvador Allende knows how the USA respects democracy

and the democratically elected leaders that the people elect.
He knows it from heaven, and the BushCo will know it from hell.

[Vidar]

2. I'm glad the OAS is speaking up. We'll probably just pay local

thugs & assassins as our troops are otherwise occupied.

[C_U_L8R]

3. it's bad enough we have to be forewarned

geez.. our government is so out of control
that it's almost assumed that we are going
meddle in other countries elections
(yes i know it's been going on for years)
it's shameful

[struggle4progress]

6. Stop U.S. Intervention in Nicaragua's November Elections!

... The present administration has made it clear that a government that is cooperating with the US will do the following: (1) support CAFTA and other free trade policies, (2) participate in all the US requests concerning the war on terrorism, (3) ensure that the Nicaraguan national police receive training that blurs the time-honored distinction between civilian policing and military action, and (4) not maintain friendly diplomatic relationships with either Cuba or Venezuela.

Ambassador Trivelli goes on to make it clear that the selection of the candidate for the PLC party cannot be former President Aleman, nor anyone he selects and that the election of the FSLN party candidate, Daniel Ortega, will not be accepted by the present US government. Mr. Ortega was the person vilified during the 1980’s when former president Reagan’s administration supported an overthrow of the democratically elected Ortega government. Thus for Nicaraguans the US statements about former president Ortega bring to mind the war and the effects of US intervention.

Think for a minute how the US people might react if the ambassador from Venezuela felt free to lobby for various candidates and President Chavez of Venezuela were to say consistently during the next up-coming election “If the republican candidate wins, you can be sure that we will cut off all oil to the US.” Not just Republicans would be angry at such interference in our national elections. That’s how Nicaraguans – no matter how they plan to vote – feel about the US government’s interference in the up-coming elections ...

http://www.nicanet.org/stop_US_intervention.php

[Judi Lynn]

12. Nicaragua braced for the return of the ugly Americans

Nicaragua braced for the return of the ugly Americans

Wednesday September 6, 2006
By Andrew Buncombe

For the people of Nicaragua, there must be a sense of deja vu, coupled with a deep feeling of foreboding, as they again come under the harsh spotlight of a Republican American Administration.

More than 20 years after the United States intervened to brutally oust a democratically elected government, it is again being accused of interfering in the Central American nation's domestic politics to ensure the victory of its preferred candidate.

And again, it is acting against the left-wing Sandinista party and its candidate, Daniel Ortega.

US intervention 2006-style does not involve spending US$300 million ($465 million) to support anti-government Contra forces, an intervention that led to a vicious war and the death of up to 30,000 people.

This time, America's involvement involves making clear its preferences by having its ambassador denounce Ortega as "anti-democratic", a "candidate from the past" and a "tiger who hasn't changed his stripes".

There is also the veiled threat that the US may not co-operate with a government headed by the Sandinistas. One senior US official wrote in a Nicaraguan newspaper last year that should Ortega be elected, "Nicaragua would sink like a stone".
(snip/...)

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10399886

[cal04]

13. Sandinistas' Ortega finally has chance to win job back

(snip)
Washington fears Ortega will team up with Hugo Chavez, its Latin American nemesis. The Venezuelan leader has backed Ortega openly, calling him a "brother" and sending low-cost fuel to ease Nicaragua's constant power failures.

(snip)
Ortega's closest rival, the Harvard-educated banker Eduardo Montealegre, warns that Ortega will spread Chavez's populist politics across the region and "put an end to the advances that democracy and foreign investment have achieved."

(snip)
Leftist Alan Garcia regained the presidency of Peru promising not to repeat the mistakes of his 1985-1990 presidency that left his country mired in hyperinflation and guerrilla violence. Garcia's opposition to Chavez earned him a White House visit this month and a promise from President Bush to safeguard a preferential trade deal.

http://www.cleveland.com/news/plaindealer/index.ssf?/base/news/1161514681285400.xml&coll=2

[roody]

15. I spent a few days in Nicaragua in August.

My thoughts on US threats are: "If this poverty is what we get when we do the US' bidding, what have we got to lose?"

[knitter4democracy]

16. When I was there in 94, there were still Sandinistas.

I was there with a church group, and one town we went to was Leon, a Sandinista stronghold. It was the first time I had ever heard the other side of the story. Let's just say that people there were nice to us but furious with our government. I can't blame them.

[Unvanguard]

17. Right. That'll work.

The country that was willing to launch a terrorist war against the government the last time the FSLN was in power is not going to sit back and watch the party gain power again, whatever the OAS insists.

The Sandinistas, by now, should expect this, and be capable of counteracting it.

[Judi Lynn]

19. More on Washington's meddling in Nicaragua:

The Anti-Empire Report
The Jingo Bells are Ringing
by William Blum
www.dissidentvoice.org
October 22, 2006

~snip~
Operation Because We Can

Captain Ahab had his Moby Dick. Inspector Javert had his Jean Valjean. The United States has its Fidel Castro. Washington also has its Daniel Ortega. For 27 years, the most powerful nation in the world has found it impossible to share the Western Hemisphere with one of its poorest and weakest neighbors, Nicaragua, if the country's leader was not in love with capitalism.

From the moment the Sandinista revolutionaries overthrew the US-supported Somoza dictatorship in 1979, Washington was concerned about the rising up of that long-dreaded beast -- "another Cuba." This was war. On the battlefield and in the voting booths. For almost 10 years, the American proxy army, the Contras, carried out a particularly brutal insurgency against the Sandinista government and its supporters. In 1984, Washington tried its best to sabotage the elections, but failed to keep Sandinista leader Ortega from becoming president. And the war continued. In 1990, Washington's electoral tactic was to hammer home the simple and clear message to the people of Nicaragua: If you re-elect Ortega all the horrors of the civil war and America's economic hostility will continue. Just two months before the election, in December 1989, the United States invaded Panama for no apparent reason acceptable to international law, morality, or common sense (The United States naturally called it "Operation Just Cause"); one likely reason it was carried out was to send a clear message to the people of Nicaragua that this is what they could expect, that the US-Contra war would continue and even escalate, if they re-elected the Sandinistas.

It worked; one cannot overestimate the power of fear, of murder, rape, and your house being burned down. Ortega lost, and Nicaragua returned to the rule of the free market, striving to roll back the progressive social and economic programs that had been undertaken by the Sandinistas. Within a few years widespread malnutrition, wholly inadequate access to health care and education, and other social ills, had once again become a widespread daily fact of life for the people of Nicaragua.

Each presidential election since then has pitted perennial candidate Ortega against Washington's interference in the process in shamelessly blatant ways. Pressure has regularly been exerted on certain political parties to withdraw their candidates, so as to avoid splitting the conservative vote against the Sandinistas. US ambassadors and visiting State Department officials publicly and explicitly campaign for anti-Sandinista candidates, threatening all kinds of economic and diplomatic punishment if Ortega wins, including difficulties with exports, visas, and vital family remittances by Nicaraguans living in the United States. In the 2001 election, shortly after the September 11 attacks, American officials tried their best to tie Ortega to terrorism, placing a full-page ad in the leading newspaper which declared, among other things, that: "Ortega has a relationship of more than thirty years with states and individuals who shelter and condone international terrorism." <5> That same year a senior analyst in Nicaragua for the international pollsters Gallup was moved to declare: "Never in my whole life have I seen a sitting ambassador get publicly involved in a sovereign country's electoral process, nor have I ever heard of it." <6> (snip/...)

http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Oct06/Blum22.htm