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Oliver North in Nicaragua: The height
of cynicism
BY NIDIA DIAZ —Granma
International staff writer—
IN
reality, the empire does not know what else to do in
its campaign to create fear and discredit around
Daniel Ortega’s campaign leading up to the November
5 elections in which, according to all sides, he
would be the leading candidate in the first round
and possibly the winner.
With
that in mind, Dan Burton, the fascist U.S.
legislator and associate of the Cuban-American
mafia, and Donald Rumsfeld, the discredited U.S.
Secretary of Defense, have been visiting Managua in
an active and overt sapping operation.
Meanwhile, U.S. Secretary of Commerce Carlos
Gutierrez acted as a virtual intermediary in a
teleconference from Washington addressed to
reporters in Nicaragua, who were summoned to hear
him by the Northern country’s embassy. This is not
even to mention the systematic Yankee proconsul work
being undertaken in Managua by Paul Trivelli, who
has been traveling all over Nicaragua seeking —
belatedly — a coordination of rightist forces, which
he has not been unable to do and has to content
himself for now with giving support to the candidacy
of banker Eduardo Montealegre of the Nicaraguan
Liberal Alliance.
According to news reports the Cuban-born Gutierrez
warned that a victory by Ortega “would scare off
foreign investors and endanger Nicaragua’s
participation in the Central American Free Trade
Agreement with the United States.”
You
can’t get much clearer than that.
Added to that, the online edition of the British
newspaper The Guardian revealed that the
White House has threatened to eliminate U.S.
investment in Nicaragua if Daniel Ortega wins the
presidency, while the State Department warned its
citizens about possible outbreaks of violence
before, during and after the November 5 elections,
and urged those living in that country not to go out
into the streets, and those planning to visit not to
do so.
The
State Department warning has certainly caught the
attention of analysts and political commentators,
who have also received information from the Army,
the police and the Electoral Council confirming the
adoption of measures to prevent any “outbreak of
violence,” although to date, no intelligence
information would lead them to believe that will
happen.
The
polls, for their part, show the Sandinista leader –
who is standing for the third time since losing
power in 1990 in an alliance with forces formerly
against his government and even with ex-Contra
representatives— ahead of his main rivals. The
majority of surveys say he is likely to win more
than 30%, and some even show him with 37%, which
would enable him to win in the first round.
In
Nicaragua, in order to win the presidency, the
candidate must obtain 35% or more of the vote and a
difference of at least five percentage points over
the closest rival. The polls and political analysts
are not ruling out a second round, in which
right-wing forces — if they want to block his
government program — would have to unite.
It
is in this high-pressure scenario that none other
than former Colonel Oliver North arrived in Managua;
the man with an indisputable record of service in
the dirty war against the Sandinista Revolution and
the Nicaraguan people when he was National Security
advisor to the Republican government of Ronald
Reagan, and who for five years directed illegal
operations in Central America that became a secret
supply network for the Contra forces.
Now,
the former military officer is not just an associate
of a company that hires torturers to go to Iraq,
paying them up to $120,000 per year, he also acted
as a reporter for the right-wing news network Fox
News on the first days of U.S. aggression in that
Arab country. That is the same network that has
mounted an unconstrained campaign to discredit
Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez and the Bolivarian
Revolution.
While first-, second-, and third-class Washington
spokespeople reiterate that North did not go to
Nicaragua under Washington’s orders, most believe
that his services have been sold to the highest
bidder, whoever is most interested in Ortega losing
the election.
North’s presence in Managua is a slap in the face
for the people of that sister nation, who cannot
forget that during that dirty war, 30,000
Nicaraguans died and that Central American country’s
economy was shattered. After taking a photo with
José Rizo, the candidate of the governing Liberal
Constitutional Party (PLC), of the adipose and
corrupt ex-president Alemán, North told everyone who
would listen that a victory for Daniel Ortega would
be “the end of Nicaragua” and in that sense, he
constantly added, “I think this is something that
should concern all of us.”
In
the days leading up to November 5, further specimens
of Washington’s fauna will sink their claws into
Managua with the goal of seeing Ortega fall at the
polls; the latter’s winning card is not what he did
in the past, at least during the early years of the
Revolution, but in the disaster created by the
neoliberal governments that followed.
The
4.2 million Nicaraguans living in poverty; 35% of
the population illiterate; 800,000 children outside
of the school system; 1.5 million people going
hungry every day, and the docile and servile
submission of their rulers to Washington in the last
16 years are sufficient reason to not vote for
Montealegre or Rizo, just to cite those with the
best possibilities in this election.
The
Great Nicaragua Unity Wins alliance, in which the
Sandinista Front brought together conservatives,
former Contras and sectors of the right, and which
more than a few have criticized, has, if the polls
are right, a real possibility of contesting the
representatives of neoliberalism for the presidency,
both in the first and second rounds — if, as
Washington has announced, there are no “outbreaks of
violence” or electoral fraud.
If
it were victorious, the Sandinista Front would have
a second historic opportunity to govern with all and
for the good of all.
(Translated by Granma International)
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