Isolated
Nicaragua Senses Opportunity in Honduras
Crisis
By Tim Rogers | Correspondent of The
Christian Science Monitor
For Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega,
whose government has been on the defensive
since last year's alleged electoral fraud,
the military coup in Honduras has presented
a golden opportunity to go on the offensive.
"We are launching a battle for democracy,"
announced Mr. Ortega at a June 29 meeting of
Latin American leaders, flanked by leftist
presidents Raul Castro of Cuba and Hugo
Chávez of Venezuela.
In the hours following last Sunday's ouster
of Honduran President Manuel Zelaya, Ortega
quickly jockeyed himself into a leadership
role in the region's condemnation of the
coup.
Taking advantage of the fact that Nicaragua
was already scheduled to host a June 29
summit of Central American presidents,
Ortega also invited the leftist members of
the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas
(ALBA) and other Latin American leaders to
attend.
Within less than 24 hours, presidents and
representatives from 20 Latin American and
Caribbean countries had descended upon
Managua, converting the city into what the
Sandinista government glowingly called "the
capital of democracy."
Ortega, seated in the center chair at the
banquet table, conducted the meeting as the
master of ceremony.
The Sandinista administration, which has
been accused of trampling on democracy and
isolating Nicaragua from the concert of
nations, referred to the meeting as "one of
the greatest democratic moments" for their
government. Ortega's leadership role was
hailed as a "cause of pride for Nicaragua."
"It was a clear manifestation of the
international leadership of Nicaragua under
President Daniel Ortega," said Vice Foreign
Minister Valdrack Jaentschke. "This is a
moment of national pride."
For others, listening to Ortega, Chávez, and
Castro defend democracy, free elections, and
freedom of the press smacked more of irony.
"Leaders of governments who are snubbing
basic freedoms and human rights [in their
own countries] come here and declare
themselves the leaders of free expression,
when we know by their actions they are doing
the exact opposite," says Carlos Lauria,
Americas program coordinator for the New
York-based Committee to Protect Journalists.
Mr. Lauria was in Managua this week to
present a report titled "Daniel Ortega's war
on the media."
The opposition sees it differently.
Nicaraguan opposition leaders took equal
offense to this week's political theatrics.
"Obviously, some of the governments of ALBA,
notoriously Chávez and Ortega, have a double
standard," says opposition leader Edmundo
Jarquín, of the leftist Sandinista
Renovation Movement. "While they stifle
democracy in Venezuela and Nicaragua, they
say they are defending it in Honduras."
Despite the apparent irony of the event,
some see a silver lining.
Victor Hugo Tinoco, a former member of the
Sandinistas' inner circle and ex-vice
minister of foreign affairs during the first
Sandinista government in the 1980s, says he
thinks the emergency summit here could be
viewed as a step toward strengthening
democracy in the hemisphere.
"One can look at the situation
pessimistically and cynically, but I think
it was positive because it was saying that
democracy is an obligation in the hemisphere
and the hemisphere is obliged to act when
one country breaks from democracy," Mr.
Tinoco says.
Tinoco, now an opposition lawmaker with the
Sandinista Renovation Movement, said
Ortega's impassioned defense of democracy in
Honduras is noteworthy, because it shows he
thinks the principles of democracy supersede
a government's claim to sovereignty.
Since Nicaragua's election scandal last
year, Ortega's government has dismissed all
foreign criticism as an offense to
Nicaraguan sovereignty. And despite his own
record of silencing unfriendly media, Ortega
was sharply critical of this week's harsh
media censorship by the de facto government
of Honduras. (For more on the election
scandal and Ortega's handling of the media,
click here.)
But now that Ortega is raising his voice
against the situation in Honduras, it could
open a space for dialogue in Nicaragua about
last year's elections, Tinoco says
hopefully.
"Our position is that we are against
military coups and we are also against
electoral fraud," Tinoco says. "They are
both deplorable, because both represent a
violation of democracy and citizens'
rights."
The lawmaker predicts that "sooner or later
the contradictions between Ortega's words
and actions has to end, because it's not
sustainable."
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