Oliver North in Nicaragua: The height of cynicism

BY NIDIA DIAZ

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)