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<a href="http://www.envio.org.ni/articulo/3250" eudora="autourl">
http://www.envio.org.ni/articulo/3250<br><br>
</a></font><h1><b>Why We Joined the Movement to Rescue
Sandinismo</b></h1><font size=3>The reflection below by the legendary
FSLN guerrilla commander and member of the FSLN’s Democratic Left
tendency opened with this: “We call on all Sandinista militants, all who
share the dream of a different Nicaragua, to join this effort to rescue
Sandinismo.” We publish it here because we believe it also enriches the
current debate about the Latin American Left as a whole. <br><br>
</font><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=3> <br><br>
</font><b>Mónica Baltodano<br><br>
</b>Our Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) was that of Carlos
Fonseca and we first knew about it through the mysterious paintings that
appeared on the walls of homes in the early sixties. It was an FSLN of
values and a convincing mystique, drawing us into the fight and even the
challenge of death. It was an FSLN of hope that has now been transformed
into just another political party, usufruct of an economically and
politically dominant group in the party structures whose fundamental aim
is to dispute arenas of power. This transmutation didn’t happen
overnight. It has been a long and continuous process not without its
share of resistance. A politically conscious grassroots membership is
still resisting the intent to annul their historic role as a transforming
force committed to the excluded. <br><br>
<h2><b>The Democratic Left: <br>
Critical consciousness and grassroots
struggle</b></h2><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=3>Many of us
have been involved in the struggle to maintain the original vocation of
this political force, trying to form small groups, movements, organic
tendencies and currents of opinion within the Sandinista Front under
various names. The most persistent group in this respect has been the
Democratic Left (ID), which grew out of the “Group of 29” that emerged in
October 1993—three years after the FSLN’s electoral defeat—to challenge
the FSLN’s policy of “co-government” with the Chamorro government. Later,
the ID became a tendency that fought for leadership of the FSLN in the
1994 Congress, where new statutes were debated and a new party leadership
was elected. We struggled convinced that there were forces interested in
“moderating” the FSLN to turn it into a centrist force, something we
rejected. The Democratic Left was also the main force behind Daniel
Ortega at that time. We have to acknowledge that this permitted his
leadership—at the time very weakened within the party—to recover the
strength to establish and ensure what he now is: the autocratic head of a
good part of Sandinismo. <br><br>
Starting with the 1994 Congress, at a time when the revolution was being
dismantled and neoliberal “packages” were being imposed, the Democratic
Left insisted on maintaining the FSLN’s grassroots nature and
ideologically identifying with revolutionary proposals. It counseled that
the party should start establishing a social correlation for change based
on developing educated and critical grassroots consciousness, resistance
and above all struggle against the neoliberal avalanche and the
ideological backpedaling so in vogue in those years. <br><br>
From within the FSLN leadership we also pushed for internal changes,
convinced that internal democracy was not at odds with its revolutionary
nature. We aspired to improve our party’s existing organization,
inherited from the years of war. Our forces pushed for the election of
internal authorities through a democratic process of mass participation
and encouraged the development of alliances with forces such as the
Women’s Coalition, which allowed us to seek a new relationship with
autonomous movements. We also promoted women’s participation through the
“braid,” in which every other candidate on the slate had to be a woman,
and the consulting of candidacies, which led to genuine primary elections
with over 400,000 participants in 1996. <br><br>
</font><h2><b>Distrust, maneuvers, accusations and
exclusion</b></h2><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=3>This
transforming vision led us to propose a new presidential candidate. Few
know that in 1995, our tendency persuaded the National Directorate
plenary and the main FSLN bodies that allowing Daniel Ortega to run again
would be a mistake. We even managed to temporarily convince him, as FSLN
general secretary, of this point of view. So we unanimously decided that
Mariano Fiallos, the prestigious former rector of the National Autonomous
University of Nicaragua (UNAN) and then president of the electoral branch
of government, would be the presidential candidate, but this decision was
aborted by a combination of maneuvers by Daniel and his closest cronies,
plus certain vacillations by Mariano. In the end, we went into the 1996
elections with Daniel Ortega as the candidate. Arnoldo Alemán won.
<br><br>
The tension and constant struggles within the National Directorate
gradually convinced Daniel Ortega that our forces weren’t as
unconditional as he would like. He was right. We were advocating
principles, values and a vision of Nicaragua and the FSLN. Our current
was not about strengthening a figure or gravitating around a single
person. <br><br>
Thus we came to the 1998 Congress. It was by then evident that General
Secretary Daniel Ortega no longer trusted a a good part of the Democratic
Left. The most important shifts were felt internally in late 1997 when,
with his endorsement, conservative forces within the party totally
neutralized a proposal to reorganize the party that had been carefully
drafted by an internal commission. The most important arguments revolved
around the idea that the proposal’s real purpose was to weaken Daniel’s
strength. <br><br>
Another significant sign was the FSLN’s excessive opening—at Daniel
Ortega’s initiative—to the development of a new current within the FSLN
called the Sandinista Business Bloc, which included Herty Lewites. For
the 1998 Congress, Ortega offered this group his full support to increase
its corresponding quotas of internal power. By then Zoilamérica had
already accused Ortega of sexual abuse and harassment, shaking the party
and all Sandinistas. The reaction was a classic Stalinist-style internal
maneuver, accusing important members of our current of what were called
“imperialist lies” to weaken Daniel’s leadership.* The idea behind
unjustly blaming us was to disqualify our tendency. <br><br>
All this led us to the conviction not to run for posts in the FSLN’s
National Directorate. We were convinced of the importance of occupying
spaces in the middle-level leadership, closer to the base. Backed by the
Carlos Fonseca Initiative in Managua, we sought spaces in the
departmental leadership. All internal paths were closed to us in a manner
worthy of a police state and we were finally relegated from all party
posts. Even so, we persevered without resigning our militancy. <br><br>
</font><h2><b>The pact: Perks, property, <br>
putrefaction and
politicking</b></h2><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=3>Daniel
Ortega’s closing speech to the 1998 party congress marked the way to the
deals and pacts that had been opened with the negotiation of the Law of
Reformed, Urban and Rural Property in August 1997, just months after
Arnold Alemán took presidential office. This new approach was a
unilateral decision, not consulted with any structures. <br><br>
Immediately after that congress, the path was cleared for the pact with
the PLC. The top leadership of both parties agreed to constitutional
reforms and pocket-lining agreements whose implementation was postponed
only because Hurricane Mitch left the Alemán government seriously
questioned. From then on, our tendency’s differences with the
transactional policies and lines of the Daniel backers became
increasingly evident within the FSLN’s bench in the National Assembly.
The FSLN pact with Alemán was felt even in Ministry of Government
interventions against social foundations, NGOs and media belonging to
members of our tendency. <br><br>
The worst part of the pact—in the Democratic Left’s judgment—was the
commitment to demobilize the grassroots forces, pulling the plug on the
struggle against the privatizations and other International Monetary Fund
and World Bank policies, including the structural adjustment plans. The
takeover of Nicaragua by the market economy and its imbalances
encountered no resistance. The pact was also expressed in a huge number
of under-the-table property negotiations, which ensured the new holdings
of the emerging Sandinista economic group, including former worker and
peasant leaders who had appropriated part of the business properties
negotiated in the first and second concertation agreements signed during
the Chamorro government. The pact further opened the way for the most
raging corruption ever seen, with no official denunciation or opposition
from the FSLN. As a result, the capital of the emerging economic group
headed up by Arnoldo Alemán also grew apace. <br><br>
The Democratic Left warned of the pact’s disastrous political-ideological
consequences. Early on we charged that it was intensifying the FSLN’s
slide down the slippery slope of politicking, election mania and a logic
of power based on divvying up public posts and personal businesses. We
argued that this behavior was changing the FSLN into a party along the
lines of the “historical parallels” denounced by Carlos Fonseca, which
was precisely what had triggered the construction of a new force
representing the oppressed in the sixties: the FSLN. <br><br>
</font><h2><b>Whatever works for the moment: <br>
Pact with Bolaños, pact with
Alemán</b></h2><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=3>The Democratic
Left was able to pull together hundreds of Sandinistas around rejection
of the pact between the FSLN and Arnoldo Alemán. Opinion polls showed
that over 80% of the population opposed the pact’s agreements, and over
half of all Sandinistas disagreed with the path chosen despite the
propagandistic campaign arguing that the constitutional and electoral
reforms agreed to in the pact would guarantee the FSLN victory in the
2001 elections. <br><br>
In 2000, the Democratic Left again reiterated its opposition to Daniel
Ortega’s perpetual presidential candidacy and thousands of Sandinistas
expressed their own disagreement in the FSLN primaries elections. Despite
rigged elections, official results showed over 40% for pre-candidates
Víctor Hugo Tinoco and Alejandro Martínez Cuenca, although it is known
that they really pulled over 50%. The results of the 2001 general
elections did not justify the main pro-pact argument and again the Right
won the presidency, this time with Enrique Bolaños. <br><br>
Recent events are better known. The FSLN leadership—by then one official
body and another equally real one in the shadows representing the
interests of the economic groups and with evident power assigned to
Rosario Murillo, General Secretary Daniel Ortega’s wife—chose to “play
both sides,” cutting deals with either Bolaños or Alemán based on the
needs of the moment. <br><br>
This explains why, despite strong pressure from the base and the
population in general, the FSLN’s official position on corruption was
timid, ambiguous and irrelevant. Not until commitments had been wrung
from the Bolaños government did Daniel give the FSLN legislative bench
the nod to strip Arnoldo Alemán of his parliamentary immunity so he could
be tried on corruption charges. <br><br>
US meddling, Washington’s visceral hatred of anything Sandinista and
President Bolaños’ servile attitude shattered the Ortega-Bolaños pact’s
precarious equilibrium and Ortega returned with renewed energy to his
pact with Alemán, by that time sentenced to 20 years in “prison,” which
he is still serving on his luxurious hacienda. Daniel Ortega and his
buddies met with Alemán innumerable times in his residential “prison” and
in the drunken atmosphere of that union signed “strategic agreements”
with a man convicted of brazenly pillaging the public treasury! They even
recorded this ignominy in a despicable photograph that has provided
inerasable proof of their conspiring. <br><br>
</font><h2><b>Demobilized, resigned and cowed <br>
in the Ortega-Murillo family’s
hands</b></h2><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=3>There is more to
these commitments than is publicly visible. Under the perverse “one for
you, one for me” logic, Daniel Ortega and Arnoldo Alemán divvied up all
the important public posts, public funds, laws and judges’ sentences.
This process has intensified the conviction that all decisions taken in
Nicaraguan state institutions directly depend on the will of the two
<i>caudillos.</i> <br><br>
Simultaneously, many FSLN leaders have begun to get actively involved in
fundamentalist religious sects, creating an objective confusion between
their political and religious militancy. It was no accident that this
coincided with the evident pact between the Ortega-Murillo family and
Cardinal Obando after it became clear that the corruption had sunk its
roots into various institutions linked to the Catholic hierarchy as well.
<br><br>
This other pact also has expressions in the public institutions. The PLC
evidently demanded the presidency of the Supreme Electoral Council for
one of its own militants, but the FSLN made sure it went to Obando’s
highly questioned protégé, Roberto Rivas. It was also expressed in the
public defense of Cardinal Obando by Ortega backers through radio and TV
campaigns, banners and flyers with mottoes such as “Obando, prince of
reconciliation, the FSLN supports you”; in banners alluding to the Virgin
Mary, all signed officially by the FSLN; or in the meshing of political
and private activities such the Ortega-Murillo religious marriage
officiated by Obando, covered by the FSLN propaganda secretariat and sent
out to all the TV channels as if it were a party act. <br><br>
The official FSLN is increasingly controlled by the Ortega-Murillo family
circle and its economic group. Together with their intimate allies from
the powerful Business Bloc, they have not only wrested the FSLN as an
instrument of change away from the people, but have slid down the path of
conformity and resignation—similar to the effects of certain religious
currents—through the opiate of electioneering and the insane competition
for posts of power. <br><br>
</font><h2><b>Today’s FSLN: Autocrat surrounded by
courtiers</b></h2><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=3>
Autocracy—power in the hands of a single person—is the polar opposite of
democracy. It damages the development of any political or social force,
particularly one that claims to work for transformation. The FSLN hasn’t
been led in a political direction as a result of debate, analysis and
joint decisions since the 1998 congress. It has instead suffered an
involution from collective leadership to authentic autocracy. <br><br>
What has happened to the citizenry has also happened to the party
membership. It isn’t passive, but rather engages every day, in practice.
It can’t be called submissive, because it is not blindly subordinate. We
have the right and duty to be critical, self-critical, thoughtful and
belligerent and to take an active part in our party’s decisions.
Autocratic power promotes a passive membership, one that deposits its
sovereignty in the autocrat. This isn’t being a militant; it’s being a
vassal. Autocratic power seeks to reduce militancy to vassalage, which is
why thousands of us have been rebelling for years, refusing to
subordinate ourselves to what’s happening in our party. <br><br>
In our Nicaragua, desperation is growing alongside poverty. And we
Sandinistas haven’t only been despoiled of a force for change that used
to represent us, we’ve also been plunged into alienation. Because
autocrats don’t educate, don’t provide tools for shaping subjects who
feel that they are owners of their own destiny. Autocrats have no
interest in debate, diversity of thought, alternative information or
political formation. <br><br>
Autocrats need a compact contingent of courtiers to guarantee and
maintain their power. They depend on their court just as the courtiers
depend on their power. They need each other. Autocratic power also needs
religious power on its side, turning spiritual affairs into an instrument
of domination. It even needs magic and the stars lined up to sustain it.
<br><br>
In the Ortega court everything revolves around proximity to power and
struggles for leadership positions and public posts. Its main cadres
periodically get embroiled in internal battles over inclusion on the
privileged list and many unemployed middle-level cadres systematically
sell out for some space that will toss them salary crumbs from the tables
of power served from the courtiers’ control of the institutions.
<br><br>
But we know many revolutionaries inside the current party structures who
are making unflagging efforts to remain faithful to Carlos Fonseca’s
legacy, fighting for political education and the party’s grassroots
orientation. Their efforts are praiseworthy, inspired by the colors of
our banner and an understandable concern to preserve the party’s unity in
the hope that one day Daniel Ortega will rectify his path. <br><br>
</font><h2><b>Resisting and struggling <br>
against an inhuman
capitalism</b></h2><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=3>As a
current of opinion, the Democratic Left has consistently demanded that
Daniel’s wing of the party return to the FSLN’s original postulates. As
historical militants in our organization, we have demanded rectification
time and again, warning of the de facto capitulation implied by all these
attitudes and decisions. <br><br>
We’ve done it by political means, writing in the media, developing
activities with grassroots Sandinista sectors, participating in all
spaces of resistance we’ve been able to pry open, with a legitimate
agenda that includes total rejection of imperialist policies and the war
against Iraq; militant solidarity with the people, revolution and
leadership of the Cuban revolution, especially with Fidel Castro; and
militant backing of the Palestinian people’s struggle and Venezuela’s
Bolivarian revolution. <br><br>
We’ve been participating in the forums of resistance against the Free
Trade Agreements and Plan Puebla Panama and have particularly mobilized
against ratification of the Central American Free Trade Agreement,
against privatiza-tion of water and in defense of people’s rights in
general. We’ve also been supporting the struggle of workers affected by
Nemagon and the just demands of consumers against the public service rate
hikes. <br><br>
From the different spaces the Democratic Left’s members occupy in civil
society, in the alternative social movements and grassroots
organizations, we have supported people’s efforts to get some social
responses and have developed civic education efforts. At the same time
that “Danielismo” has been deconstructing the FSLN as a force for change,
we have continued struggling to reconstruct San-dinismo inside the party
and from other arenas of society. <br><br>
</font><h2><b>The FSLN’s only conflict <br>
with the current
government</b></h2><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=3>
Neoliberalism has succeeded in dismantling almost all social
transformations achieved by the revolution and has instituted a
voracious, inhuman capitalism: it has privatized public services,
providing opportunities to strengthen transnational control of our
economy; it has handed out national territory in mining and forestry
concessions; it has promoted the privatization of water for all kinds of
purposes, including huge dams. Businesses with foreign capital and gas
stations have cropped up everywhere, while the only options left to the
vast majority of the population are the precarious jobs offered by the
<i>maquilas, </i>emigration to Costa Rica and other countries or the most
absolute poverty. <br><br>
The current economic policy has favored only a group of oligarchs.
Today’s government is a complete sell-out, in the strict sense of the
word: the best land, the youngest and best workers, the economic
legislation, energy, communications, the mines, the best coasts, the
exportables, water… everything is earmarked for foreign capital And
because it has thrown its lot in with the pact, the FSLN has come into
conflict with the government over divvying up public posts, not over
questioning its policies in any depth—beyond the rhetoric—because its
leaders also participate in the above-mentioned businesses. <br><br>
</font><h2><b>“Better to lose with Daniel <br>
than win with anyone
else”</b></h2><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=3>In early 2005, a
sizable group of Sandinistas initiated a political process aimed at
putting Herty Lewites forward as an FSLN presidential pre-candidate in
the internal primary elections established in the party statutes. The
official leadership responded by expelling Lewites and his campaign chief
Víctor Hugo Tinoco from the party without recurring to any legitimate
statutory proceeding, eliminating the primaries themselves and again
confirming Daniel Ortega as the FSLN’s arbitrary presidential candidate.
They launched all manner of disqualifiers against Lewites’ supporters,
the most common being that they were agents of imperialism, rightwing
infiltrators and betrayers of the popular interest. <br><br>
As the Democratic Left, we came out immediately in favor of the
militancy’s right to primary elections and of a political debate that
would permit informed and mature candidate selection. We were aware that
Herty Lewites represents centrist positions and that we don’t share his
discourse on various issues, but we did share his concern for a
renovation within Sandinismo, and above all a break with the pact-fed
official line. <br><br>
We rejected the disqualifiers because they were also inconsistent: over
the years Lewites has been one of the people Daniel Ortega himself most
trusted, until he dared challenge his presidential candidacy. This dual
discourse, this double standard, has become the pro-Daniel crowd’s modus
operandi. <br><br>
We also charged that Daniel’s stubborn insistence on the presidential
candidacy despite the repeatedly demonstrated solid and broad vote
against him can only be understood through the explicitly declared logic
that it’s “preferable to lose with Daniel than to win with anyone else,”
which expresses the pragmatism and aims of the power group around him.
For them the status quo will be maintained whether he wins or loses the
elections. Their only goal is to defend their interests, and seen from
the logic of the pact, having a pro-Alemán PLC in office poses no risk to
them, while a pro-Alemán PLC out of office would only mean more of the
same. <br><br>
</font><h2><b>It’s not only about winning
elections</b></h2><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=3>We have
declared repeatedly that the changes Nicaragua needs require
modifications in the social correlation of forces. It’s a question not
just of winning elections but doing so based on an attractive program of
changes that enjoys the backing of an aware public. To that end, we’ve
put our bets on grassroots work, the construction of autonomous and
belligerent social movements, the organization of the citizenry around
its own interests and the development of civic consciousness. <br><br>
Our conviction has been nourished by innumerable Latin American examples.
It’s not enough for a party that declares itself leftist to come to
power. It must do so with a program involving real breaks with the
prevailing economic model based on the Washington Consensus. Declared
desire isn’t enough; also required is a grassroots correlation rooted in
the formation of a critical consciousness, grassroots organization and an
autonomous social movement able to pressure even the leftist government
for social changes. <br><br>
We thus advocate organizational efforts and an articulation of Sandinismo
that goes beyond electoral expectations and overcomes the tendency to
create movements that revolve around individual <i>caudillos. </i>This is
what we’ve worked for all these years, independent of the electoral
processes. <br><br>
</font><h2><b>We can’t stay on the sidelines; <br>
what happened isn’t
acceptable</b></h2><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=3>We can’t,
however, stay on the sidelines of the real political processes taking
place in the country. If we coldly analyze what we see in the opinion
polls, in the population’s direct participation in the media and in our
own direct contacts with grassroots Sandinistas, it is obvious that
thousands believe we can’t go into the presidential elections with
Sandinismo again straightjacketed by the logic that it doesn’t matter
what the leaders do, what interests they favor, how questionable their
conduct. because Sandinistas will supposedly end up “closing ranks,”
eternally voting for the candidates that the upper echelons loyal to
Daniel have imposed without respect for any democratic procedure.
<br><br>
This is no longer acceptable to us. In the November 5 national elections,
Sandinistas in the broadest sense of the term must be allowed other
options. It’s an elemental democratic right. Daniel Ortega’s continuism
is a form of authoritarianism that limits the most elemental political
rights, particularly those of Sandinistas, and contradicts the longed-for
freedom and democracy for which we’ve fought all our lives and for which
so many gave their life. <br><br>
</font><h2><b>Herty Lewites is a Sandinista
option</b></h2><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=3>Herty Lewites
is a Sandinista figure and the backing and sympathy he’s receiving from a
wide range of people—not just Sandinistas—must be seen as an opportunity
for Sandinismo as a whole. If the pro-Ortega upper echelons were really
thinking about people’s interests and the importance of winning
presidential office to modify the prevailing model, they would have taken
advantage of Lewites’ appeal as a candidate and thrown their efforts
behind the FSLN’s formation of a belligerent, organized grassroots social
correlation that would ensure people maximum social advantages from a
Sandinista government. <br><br>
It’s unacceptable for other options linked to Sandinismo to be barred
from electoral participation based on exclusionary or rigged processes
using the levers of the electoral branch of government. We believe that
this time the electoral gamut must be expanded to surmount the effects of
the pact we Nicaraguans are suffering and allow voters to choose from
truly different options, without the kind of polarization that has
favored the current situation. <br><br>
</font><h2><b>They’re trying to submerge us in
polarization</b></h2><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=3>The
polarization into which the two party elite blocs want to submerge us
only serves to keep us subjected. They fake contradictions to the death,
but it’s almost all words. They push the base into “closing ranks” to be
consistent with their old-time banners, but in reality they eat from the
same plate in the parliament, the Supreme Court, the Supreme Electoral
Council, the Comptroller General’s Office, the Human Rights Defense
Attorney’s Office and their own corporations. Everything is divvied up
between them, while their rank and file are supposed to believe that
they’re different. <br><br>
We believe FSLN militants have a legitimate right to support other
Sandinista candidates, even if this time they aren’t running on the
official ballot, which has been sequestered by a minority that controls
the party apparatus. For the vast majority of Sandinistas, internal
democracy has been castrated and restricted to unacceptable limits,
excluding them from participation and decision-making. <br><br>
</font><h2><b>Beyond elections and <br>
for a more just
Nicaragua</b></h2><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=3>From our
militancy in the FSLN, we’ve decided to back the efforts the Movement to
Rescue Sandinismo has been making since 2005 to construct an option that
unites all Sandinistas who don’t agree with the official policies pushed
by the pro-Ortega elite, which have led Nicaragua into a blind alley. In
particular, we back the effort to pull together all Sandinistas who
disagree with Daniel Ortega’s eternal presidential candidacy, which would
undoubtedly end in yet another Sandinista electoral defeat. <br><br>
In expressing its support for this movement, the Left of the FSLN is
aware that so far the emphasis has been on promoting a Sandinista
electoral alternative. This doesn’t mean unconditional agreement with all
the proposals and postulates put forward by Herty Lewites and other
founders of the Movement to Rescue Sandinismo. <br><br>
As leftists, we defend the right to come together around common points,
based on respect for the differences we obviously have. We don’t believe
that absolute unanimity of the broad spectrum of Sandinistas is possible,
but it is urgent to build consensus based on tolerance, considering that
the priority for Nicaragua today is to break the pact’s logic, which has
only deepened the lack of genuine alternatives to Nicaragua’s major
problems. <br><br>
</font><h2><b>An opportunity to build
agreement</b></h2><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=3>As
Sandinista militants, we consider it legitimate to call for more than the
creation of an electoral consensus. Better still is to see this movement
as an opportunity to build common agreements that enable us to join
together more permanently around a comprehensive national program, based
on a Sandinismo that insists on the need to build a more just, equitable,
humane, democratic and honest Nicaragua. <br><br>
There is a need to bring together those who have not renounced the dream
of a world of greater solidarity, a Sandinismo loyal to the values and
postulates of our heroes and martyrs, faithful to the ethics of the
common good, which doesn’t seek perks or posts and whose function is to
enforce the interests of the excluded. This mission requires mystique,
self-sacrifice, abnegation and daily work with the people, not with
<i>caudillo </i>ambitions but with the goal of developing the only
subject capable of taking on the greatest tasks. That subject is the
people itself, once it has appropriated its own destiny aware of the
causes of its precarious situation and thus endowed with the tools for
its own emancipation. <br><br>
We’re joining the Movement for the Rescue of Sandinismo from our leftist
tendency and our organizational militancy in the FSLN. We do so safe in
the knowledge that the efforts to reunite the broad array of Sandinistas,
which have been dispersed up to now, will allow new initiatives on behalf
of genuine grassroots interests either from government, if it is won, or
from the opposition. <br><br>
</font><h2><b>Rebuild Sandinismo with the <br>
banners of yesterday and
today</b></h2><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=3>The only
possibility of reforging Sandinismo as a transforming Leftist force is to
construct an historical project of emancipation and end the Danielista
monopoly aimed at co-opting the people’s history of struggle, its
symbols, commemorative events and even its dead. We have joined the
Movement to Rescue Sandinismo with our own banners, those we’ve always
defended because they’ve inspired each rebellion against the status quo:
<br><br>
The struggle for peace and life
and</font>§<font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=3> the creation of a
just, humane, peaceful world in which conflicts are decided by
negotiations and by treating all parties as equals. <br>
The creation of a
new</font>§<font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=3> economy that ends
the exclusion of the great majorities from their right to access
progress, well-being, education and a more human life. <br>
Equality for</font>§<font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=3> all
citizens and nations and the struggle against discrimination,
marginalization and backwardness. <br>
Liberty, national independence,</font>
§<font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=3> sovereignty and the struggle
against oppression and dictatorship. <br>
In addition to these traditional banners, we assume those courageously
raised by thousands of men and women on the planet who are organized in
the new social movements and civil organizations: <br>
Honesty and transparency in
public</font>§<font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=3> administration
and the fight against corruption. <br>
Full equality of
rights</font>§<font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=3> between the
sexes; dialogue; the democratization of family relations; and the
struggle against the dictatorship of men over women and parents over
children. <br>
Tolerance and coexistence among races, respect for differences and
the</font>§<font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=3> struggle against
double standards and discrimination. <br>
Integrity and</font>§<font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=3>
sincerity, the struggle against opportunism and lies. <br>
Defense of
nature</font>§<font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=3> and the
environment, the struggle against the squandering of resources and abuse
of other species. <br>
Regional and municipal autonomy, the struggle
against</font>§<font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=3>
“capital-centrism.” <br>
</font>§<font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=3> <br><br>
</font><h2><b>This isn’t just an electoral
gamble</b></h2><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=3>We consider it
urgently important to build a new democracy in our Nicaragua that is
committed to social equity and liberates citizens from the schizophrenia
of formal and real democracy in which the laws say one thing and quite
another ends up being done, the parties promise one thing and actually do
something quite different and the actions of courts and judges have
nothing to do with justice. <br><br>
We want to build a new democracy that resolves the growing disassociation
between law and reality; harmonizes the doctrine and practice of
democracy; eradicates the crisis of legality and institutionality, of
representation and legitimacy; levels the playing field between those
represented and those who represent; and ends the hateful imposition of
the pact’s majority electoral delegates over those of the minorities with
no debate. It will be a new democracy that promotes security and offers
new values and hopes to the majority of Nicaraguans. <br><br>
We’re convinced that our main adversary in the efforts to construct
“another possible world” is the world-dominating imperialism practiced by
the US government and all those who support globalization and the
imposition of the capitalist model, now in its neoliberal form. They
organize measures to protect the interests of the great corporations,
propagate and defend their common interests, conquer new markets and
re-colonize entire nations. They then impose this domination on our
countries through multiple means, of which the conditions of the IMF and
World Bank programs are the best known by our people. <br><br>
But we also know that the subordination to this model in each of our
countries takes place with the complicity of docile governments that are
in turn subordinated to economic groups that benefit from these
exclusionary policies. It is therefore urgent to develop alternative
national proposals that build popular power and another social
correlation, and that place their faith in independent, sovereign
governments. <br><br>
We’re not just gambling on another electoral alternative, but on the
creation of a truly alternative political movement, identified with the
ideology of social change. Of course we need an alternative electoral
victory, but it is even more important to build a social majority for
change beyond the coming elections. <br><br>
<i>Mónica Baltodano has been an elected Managua Municipal Council member
and National Assembly representative for the FSLN as well as a member of
the party’s National Directorate. <br><br>
</i> <br>
</font><x-sigsep><p></x-sigsep>
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