Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega is the latest would-be caudillo aiming to end constitutional constraints on his rule, announcing a “citizen power” initiative similar to the power-grab that prompted the June 28 ouster of President Manuel Zelaya in neighboring Honduras.
Ortega has called for a constitutional referendum on removing presidential term limits, the latest in a series of such moves by left-wing leaders allied to the Venezuelan-led Bolivarian Alliance for the People of Our America (ALBA).
His critics claim that Ortega is “staging an incremental coup,” less typical and more subtle than the military variety. ”
“The ALBA countries, led by Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, believe they are engaged in an ideological battle and need to employ every resource within the broad parameters of democratic legitimacy to pursue their political project and prevent what they call the right-wing oligarchs from returning to power,” according to the Inter-American Dialogue’s Michael Shifter.
His IAD colleague Daniel Erikson believes Ortega is better positioned than Zelaya to initiate constitutional change. “Ortega has a much stronger political base in Nicaragua than Zelaya did in Honduras,” Erikson said. “At the end of the day, Zelaya’s political support had dwindled and basically any institution with any weight had turned away.”
“Ortega’s authoritarian style of government has …been likened to the Somoza years,” according to one account.
The political opposition fear that the latest move will consolidate Ortega’s government which is already reaping political benefits from the $457 million in Venezuelan aid in 2008 alone that has allowed it to fund Sandinista networks and buy support through political patronage, further evidence that the “newest utopian-authoritarian vision comes flush with cash, funded by Venezuelan oil money.” Most of the aid, given under ALBA’s auspices, “has been handled by Sandinista businesses that are run as parallel state institutions with no oversight or regulation.”
Former Sandinista militants like Dora Maria Téllez have distanced themselves from Ortega:
“We are nearing a dictatorship,” Ms Téllez told The [London] Times. “He is concentrating power, buying officials, eliminating institutions, creating the conditions to advance his own authoritarian project. All that he needs now is to remain in power,” she said in a reference to Mr Ortega’s plans for constitutional reform allowing him to stand for re-election when his term expires. “He needs only parliamentary approval to do so,” she noted, adding: “He doesn’t have the votes yet, but he is close. And he will buy the ones he needs.”
Citzen power grab as that represented in the rise of Morales, Correa, Chavez and Lugo is a true power grab and takes place throughout Latin America. It is many poor for the first time ever taking the reigns of decision making away from the Latifundia, the press barons, the fruit barons, the bishops, the decendants of the Spanish aristocrats and most definetly from Washington. This is why when wealthy Zelaya broke with his kind and took the side of the poor he found himself in his PJ’s on a costa Rican tarmac.
Re: the comment of Mr. Weyland … What “poor people” grabbed power?Ortega, Chavez et al.? Maybe they used to be poor. Not now. As for the vast majority of the poor people, the only thing those demagogues have given them is companionship, i.e., more poor people.