Despite December start date, critical details of Nicaragua Canal remain a mystery

For an article about the canal, this one is pretty balanced.

Granted, “an escalating chorus of protests” may be overstated. When I was in Rivas a few weeks ago there were only a couple dozen protesters, and I frankly wondered who was funding them. As the article alludes, the NGOs that oppose everything Ortega are active in the canal opposition too.

Also, I find it strange that a 10-hour press conference by the canal folks is turned into a criticism of their secrecy. When you allow the press to grill you for 10 hours, you are hardly being secretive. Maybe the answers given weren’t completely forthcoming and the spokespersons themselves became confused, but anyone who sits for a 10-hour press conference isn’t hiding behind an authoritarian veil.

Even so, there are legitimate beefs, and this article responsibly airs them.

Yet, anyone wondering why the process isn’t more transparent only needs to consider the request of the environmental groups to delay the start of construction for four months, pending the release of an environmental impact assessment.

Suppose the delay is granted. What are the odds that futher delays wouldn’t follow the environmental impact assessment? Surely the environmental impact of the canal won’t be nil, and just as surely any impact assessment that says it will be would be challenged.

To the four months we can therefore easily add another four, then another, and so on, until everyone dies of old age debating the plans for a nonexistent canal.

I’m pretty sure that both HKND and Ortega are operating on the premise that it is easier to ask for forgiveness than permission, as well as in the belief that the good of a canal will outweigh the bad, making it and them hugely popular. Conversely, they know that a transparent process will prevent a canal from ever being constructed, at least in anyone’s lifetime.

Is this the right way to proceed? The answer probably depends upon whether you believe a canal will be good or bad for Nicaragua, since I seriously doubt that a canal could be constructed in any other way.

And we all may just be cheering or jeering from the cheap seats anyway, since my guess is that the canal will be built regardless of what the rest of us may want. We’re just amusing ourselves with the illusion that we have influence, when neither power nor money work that way.

Though you have to hand it to those folks for a 10-hour press conference. I hope the room was air conditioned.