[Sivad]

Yes, the pension reforms that have since been repealed.

Due to mass unrest.

Which then leads to the next question: why is the unrest continuing?

Maybe because Ortega is executing protestors in the streets, burning down the houses of opposition members, barring the opposition from participating in elections, and just being an all around anti-democratic thug for the last 12 years.

[Pants-of-dog]

Due to mass unrest.

Yes, it is as if Ortega is accountable to the populace. One could even describe itas democratic.

Maybe because Ortega is executing protestors in the streets, burning down the houses of opposition members, barring the opposition from participating in elections, and just being an all around anti-democratic thug for the last 12 years.

I doubt it.

This sounds like the common accusations made by neoliberal supporters when rationalising US intervention abroad.

Did you get this info from the State Department?

[Sivad]

Did you get this info from the State Department?

I got it from the MRS.

The Sandinista Renovation Movement (Movimiento Renovador Sandinista or MRS, in Spanish) is a Nicaraguan political organisation and former political party founded by dissidents of the Sandinista National Liberation Front on May 18, 1995, on the 100th anniversary of Augusto César Sandino's birth.

One of the founding leaders of MRS was Sergio Ramírez, Nicaragua's vice-president from 1985 to 1990 under the Sandinistas government. Ramírez ran as the MRS presidential candidate in the 1996 elections. The MRS got 1.33% of the votes and got 1 seat (out of 91) in the Nicaraguan Parliament.

Other party leaders included former Sandinistas Herty Lewites and Dora María Téllez.[1][2]

In June 2008, the party was disqualified from running candidates in elections, along with the Conservative Party,[3] but it still participates in coalitions with other parties.

The Movement participated in the 2008 election within a broad anti-Ortega coalition Alianza PLC led by the Constitutional Liberal Party. The elections were won by the FSLN alliance, amid accusations of electoral fraud.[4]

In addition, the MRS leads the Alianza MRS of the forces that supported their candidate in the 2006 presidential election. Besides the Sandinista Renovation Movement, the alliance includes the Nicaraguan Socialist Party, the Movimiento por el Rescate del Sandinismo and a few minor organizations.;
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandinist ... n_Movement

[Pants-of-dog]

So, you are claiming that huge swathes of Nicaraguan society are clamoring for Ortega’s resignation because he opposes a party that only 1% supported enough to vote for?

Even the socialust sources cited in that wiki article say that the MRS are incapable of creating this sort of supposed mas unrest against Ortega.

[Sivad]

So, you are claiming that huge swathes of Nicaraguan society are clamoring for Ortega’s resignation because he opposes a party that only 1% supported enough to vote for?

The MRS got 7% of the vote in 2006 and it's part a larger coalition of anti-Ortega opposition. The MRS was banned from elections by Ortega in 2008. Ortega also expelled his opposition from the FSLN, anulled the primary, and declared himself the party's candidate.

"As Daniel Ortega himself put it at the end of the event, “The congress is sovereign and made a decision. The truth is that primary elections cause a lot of problems due to the enormous erosion and friction they cause among Sandi-nistas. Why wear ourselves out and waste time with elections when at the end of the day those who ask us to hold them don’t even recognize the results? We are a party that has norms." - Daniel Ortega

Herty Lewites’ rebellion has put Daniel Ortega in check, leading him to display the worst side of his personality. In just one week, Ortega’s measures included ordering the physical intimidation of fellow Sandinistas, declaring Lewites and his campaign manager Víctor Hugo Tinoco “dishonorably discharged” from the FSLN, forbidding the use of party symbols by anyone unless personally authorized by him and prohibiting any political rallies not promoted by the party’s “owners.” In so doing, he trampled over the autonomy of three state institutions and humiliated the National Police.

[...]

The 600 Ortega supporters at the congress displayed the courage to “correct” the legal concept of the February 27 purging of Tinoco and Lewites: instead of “dishonorably discharge,” they were simply expelled. In addition, they decided to extend their own term as congress members until 2007, to avoid any “surprises” in the election of delegates for the following congress planned for February 2006. They also annulled one of the few democratic opportunities that had survived the 1998 reforms to the party statutes: the Sandinista grass roots would no longer be consulted on their choice for presidential candidate through primary elections.

Ortega used all the power he has accumulated in the branches of state in recent years, including the Supreme Electoral Council, the Managua Appeals Court, the Office of Comptroller General and the National Police, to freeze out Lewites. Two revolutionary guerrilla commanders who were also distinguished leaders of the FSLN’s Democratic Left tendency during the nineties have strongly challenged the nature of Ortega’s institutional decisions. Mónica Baltodano believes that actions “are putting us on the path to new dictatorships; these measures are dictatorial in nature,” while René Vivas considered that the resolutions “should be rejected because they’re barbarous.” For its part, the Nicaraguan Human Rights Center (CENIDH) concluded that “the CSE decision and the Appeals Court’s resolution are eminently political decisions, without legal or constitutional foundation. Both appear to respond to well-known arbitrary and anti-juridical behavior that is deepening the crisis and institutional disrepute affecting both those branches.”
http://www.envio.org.ni/articulo/2877

[Sivad]

Et Tu, Daniel?
The Betrayal of the Sandinista Revolution


But even with Alemán’s backing, Ortega was unable to win the presidency. So, before the 2006 election, he publicly reconciled with his old nemesis, Cardinal Miguel Obando y Bravo, a potent symbol of the counterrevolutionary movement in the 1980s. Ortega and his longtime companion, Rosario Murillo, announced their conversion to Catholicism and were married by the cardinal. Just before his election Ortega supported a comprehensive ban on abortion, including in cases in which the mother’s life is endangered, a measure ratified by the legislature with the crucial votes of Sandinista deputies. To round out his pre-election wheeling and dealing, Ortega selected Jaime Morales, a former Contra leader, as his vice presidential candidate.

But the Ortega government’s clientelistic and sectarian nature soon became evident when Ortega, by presidential decree, established Councils of Citizen Power under the control of the Sandinista party to administer and distribute much of the social spending. Even more importantly, under the rubric of ALBA, Ortega signed an accord with Venezuela that provides an estimated $300 million to $500 million in funds personally administered by Ortega with no public accountability.

As Mónica Baltodano, the leader of Resacte, a dissident Sandinista organization, argued in a recent article, Ortega’s fiscal and economic policies are, in fact, continuous with those of the previous governments, despite his anti-imperialist rhetoric and denunciations of neoliberalism.1 The government has signed new accords with the International Monetary Fund that do not modify the neoliberal paradigm, while the salaries of government workers remain frozen and those of teachers and health workers are the lowest in Central America. According to the Central Bank of Nicaragua, the average salary has dropped the last two years, retrogressing to 2001 levels.2

[...]

Moreover, the government and the Sandinista party are harassing and repressing their opponents. During an interview in January, Baltodano told me the right to assembly has been systematically violated during the past year, as opposition demonstrations are put down with goon squads. “Ortega is establishing an authoritarian regime, sectarian, corrupt, and repressive, to maintain his grip on power, betraying the legacy of the Sandinista revolution,” she said.

[...]

Along with MAM, the broader women’s movement in Nicaragua, which firmly opposes the Ortega government, was among the first to experience its repressive blows. In 2007 the government opened a case against nine women leaders, accusing them of conspiring “to cover up the crime of rape in the case of a 9-year-old rape victim known as ‘Rosita,’ who obtained an abortion in Nicaragua in 2003.”9 In August, Ortega was unable to attend the inauguration of Paraguayan president Fernando Lugo because of protests by the country’s feminist organizations; from then on, women’s mobilizations have occurred in other countries Ortega has visited, including Honduras, El Salvador, Costa Rica, and Peru.10

Charges were levied against other former Sandinistas who dared to speak out against the Ortega government, including 84-year-old Catholic priest Ernesto Cardenal, the renowned poet who once served as minister of culture. In August, after Cardenal criticized Ortega at Lugo’s inauguration, a judge revived an old, previously dismissed case involving a German citizen who sued Cardenal in 2005 for insulting him.11

In addition to harassing critics, the Ortega government also displayed its penchant for electoral fraud during the run-up to the November municipal balloting. Protests erupted in June, after the Ortega-stacked Supreme Electoral Council disqualified the MRS and the Conservative Party from participation. Dora Maria Tellez, a leader of the renovation movement, began a public hunger strike that led to daily demonstrations of support, often shutting down traffic in downtown Managua.

Meanwhile, bands of young Sandinista-linked thugs, claiming to be the “owners of the streets,” attacked demonstrators while the police stood idly by. Then, to prevent more demonstrations, Ortega supporters set up plantones, permanent occupation posts at the rotundas on the main thoroughfare running through Managua.

[...]

An independent Nicaraguan group, Ethics and Transparency, organized tens of thousands of observers but was denied accreditation, forcing them to observe the election from outside polling stations. But the group estimates that irregularities took place at a third of the polling places. Their complaints were echoed by Nicaraguan Catholic bishops, including Managua’s archbishop, who said, “People feel defrauded.”12

After the election, militant demonstrations erupted in Nicaragua’s two largest cities, Managua and León, and were quickly put down with violence. The European Economic Community and the U.S. government suspended funding for Nicaragua over the fraudulent elections. On January 14, before the election results were even officially published by the electoral council, Ortega swore in the new mayors at Managua’s Plaza de la Revolución. He declared: “This is the time to strengthen our institutions,” later adding, “We cannot go back to the road of war, to confrontation, to violence.” Along with the regular police, Ortega stood flanked by camisas rosadas, or redshirts, members of his personal security force. A huge banner hung over the plaza depicting Ortega with an up-stretched arm and the slogan, “To Be With the People Is to Be With God.”

“This despotic regime is bent on destroying all that is left of the Sandinista revolution’s democratic legacy,” Chamorro told me in January. “Standing in the way of a new dictatorship,” he continued, “are civil society organizations, the independent media, trade unions, opposition political parties, women’s organizations, civic leaders and others—many of whom can trace their roots back to the resistance against Somoza.”

As the Nobel-winning novelist José Saramago put it: “Once more a revolution has been betrayed from within.” Nicaragua’s revolution has indeed been betrayed, perhaps not as dramatically as Trotsky depicted Stalin’s desecration of what was best in the Bolshevik revolution. But Ortega’s betrayal is a fundamental political tragedy for everyone around the world who came to believe in a popular, participatory democracy in Nicaragua.

https://web.archive.org/web/20090304121 ... 72009.html

[Sivad]

Zoilamérica Ortega: “No girl close to Daniel Ortega is out of harm’s reach”
HAVANA TIMES — Following news of the sexual abuse and rape charges brought against the country’s leader by Elvia Junieth Flores Castillo and Patricia Jeannette Ortega Prado, Zoilamérica Ortega Murillo, the adoptive daughter of Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega, decided to offer statements describing the sexual abuse she claims she suffered at the hands of the man who raised her and continues to be married to her mother, Rosario Murillo.

In this connection, the young woman, who lives in exile in Costa Rica, offered her opinion about the reasons that make Nicaraguan authorities remain silent before the accusations levelled at the nation’s president, after evidence implicating him in three acts of pederasty was presented.

In 1998, Zoilamérica accused her step-father of having sexually abused her since the age of 11, a crime Ortega was not tried for because the judge, Juana Mendez, a member of the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN), claimed charges had been presented beyond the established time limit.

Young Elvia Junieth and Patricia Jeannette were allegedly abused by the Nicaraguan President when they were 15 and 12, respectively.

https://www.havanatimes.org/?p=115034

[Bulaba edit: warning for Rule 2 issued]

[Red_Army]

I read a book about the FSLN that hinted at some nasty shit with Ortega after Carlos Fonseca died. I have some reading to do.

[Sivad]

Ortega's a scumbag thug, every Sandinista old timer that didn't sell out for power and privilege has denounced Ortega.

[Drlee]

The Americas Director of Amnesty International, less than 3 months ago,said:

“It’s shameful that the government of President Ortega is denying the undeniable. There is a wealth of evidence, including thousands of testimonies, to show that the Nicaraguan state has committed terrible human rights violations and continues to do so on a daily basis. This has to stop before more lives are lost.

“The government’s reaction to today’s findings by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights demonstrates that the rhetoric of denial and division form part of its strategy of repression of the Nicaraguan people. We remind the state that it has an obligation under international law to protect the human rights of everyone, without distinction or discrimination.”

Now I can understand why POD would oppose a US position that supports Amnesty International....I can....no I really can't, I guess.

[Pants-of-dog]

@Sivad

Do you agree or disagree that the unrest is partially caused by US attempts at regime change?

@Drlee

You seem to be very confused about what my position is.

Do you need it clarified?

[Drlee]

Do you need it clarified?

Yes.

[Pants-of-dog]

My position is that it is very probable that the US is once again involved in attempting regime change in a left leaning Latin American country as it has done countless times before.

While it is very possible that Ortega is also a bad person who is using the state for personal gain, this does not mean that the USA is not involved.

[Sivad]

@Sivad

Do you agree or disagree that the unrest is partially caused by US attempts at regime change?

The US is fanning the flames, but really that's irrelevant to the Ortega machine's corrupt antidemocratic thuggery. It's dishonest to deny the failings and excesses of nominally leftist governments and blame all corruption and abuse in Latin America on the US. Even if the US was doing all the dirt you think it is, it still wouldn't excuse Ortega, or Maduro, or Castro, of their crimes against democracy and civil society.

Socialism will never work as long as people like you who claim to be socialists act as apologists for the state. Your mentality is ruining socialism for everyone. If you want socialism to work you have to hold state power to account. You can't give it a pass, you can't make excuses for it, you have to be prepared to call bullshit when leftist leaders or governments even so much as put a toe over the line, and the line is democracy, civil rights, and rule of law.

[redcarpet]

Socialism will never work as long as people like you who claim to be socialists act as apologists for the state. Your mentality is ruining socialism for everyone. If you want socialism to work you have to hold state power to account. You can't give it a pass, you can't make excuses for it, you have to be prepared to call bullshit when leftist leaders or governments even so much as put a toe over the line, and the line is democracy, civil rights, and rule of law.

Word!

He has sections of himself covered in the book 'How Democracies Die' . Some die because a wannabe dictator gets elected or coalitioned into government and then over time chips away at the institutions. Ortega fits it perfectly!

[Sivad]

Word!
'How Democracies Die' . Some die because a wannabe dictator gets elected or coalitioned into government and then over time chips away at the institutions.

Justice and democracy always have enemies, that's never going to change. But for some reason a lot of people on the left think the solution is to just abolish them both.

These gulagists seem to think that imperialism in the abstract is the problem, that's not the problem. The problem is the repression and abuse that imperialism represents. So whether it's imperialistic or home grown domestic, when you got a boot stomping you in the face it doesn't matter who's wearing it.

[Pants-of-dog]

The US is fanning the flames, but .....

So is that a yes or a no?

[Drlee]

My position is that it is very probable that the US is once again involved in attempting regime change in a left leaning Latin American country as it has done countless times before.

While it is very possible that Ortega is also a bad person who is using the state for personal gain, this does not mean that the USA is not involved.

This could be true. I hope it is. I would be proud of my country if it used its immense wealth and power to rescue the people of Nicaragua from a despot who employs, in the words of Amnesty International "terrible human rights violations and continues to do so on a daily basis".

These amount to murder, rape and imprisonment. Amnesty International goes on to say. "This has to stop before more lives are lost."

If stopping the rape, murder and imprisonment of people for wanting to exercise rights we take for granted is imperialism then I am proud to be an imperialist.

Now, of course you will say, "as long as we agree this is imperialism". I do not and it isn't. It is simply in the US interest and more importantly in the interest of the people of Nicaragua to have this dangerous piece of shit expunged.

[Pants-of-dog]

This could be true. I hope it is. I would be proud of my country if it used its immense wealth and power to rescue the people of Nicaragua from a despot who employs, in the words of Amnesty International "terrible human rights violations and continues to do so on a daily basis".

I thounght you supported freedom and sovereignty. I guess not.

Edit: I apologise for the above commwnt. Your personal beliefs and opinions are not relevant.

Instead, please explain why a US intervention in Nicaragua will not end up causing massive human rights violations like the last two times.

I am referring to US support of the Somoza dynasty, and US support of the contras, both of which were far more oppressive than Ortega is now.

These amount to murder, rape and imprisonment. Amnesty International goes on to say. "This has to stop before more lives are lost."

If stopping the rape, murder and imprisonment of people for wanting to exercise rights we take for granted is imperialism then I am proud to be an imperialist.

Now, of course you will say, "as long as we agree this is imperialism". I do not and it isn't. It is simply in the US interest and more importantly in the interest of the people of Nicaragua to have this dangerous piece of shit expunged.

Then we should do something about the USA. Invade it, regime change it, etc.

Because of its human rights violations obviously.

No doubt you will agree with me that this is for the best.

[Drlee]

When you are ready to make a serious post I will reply.