Nicaragua and the US: a strange electoral timing

The most important country of the hemisphere will have held elections two days after the one before last. In both cases the elections are crucial and in both cases they will have sanctioned a ruling class that has become arrogant and incompetent, more worried about personal political survival than what is good for the country. Strange turns of history make stranger bedfellows.

Iraq in the US

Amazingly the mid term elections has slowly but surely become an Iraq only affair. Gay marriage, the economy, abortion, school prayer, Enron, and more seem to have taken a distant second rank over the Iraq near fiasco. The losers to be do not seem to have a very clear idea as to what to do with Iraq and the winners to be are not much clearer either and probably will end up complicating even more the now necessary withdrawal of Iraq. So why such partiality, why such a one issue vote for so many people? After all those who support Iraq war are willing to stay as long as needed and those who oppose it (at least the serious opposition) only want a timetable to leave but are willing to make it as long as necessary.

No, perhaps the real subconscious reason for all of this is that people are getting bored with Iraq, tired of the arrogance of those who lead the war, people who every day are looking for ways to look good instead of taking the hard choice that must be taken for Iraq: partition. Energy of ennui is what will bring the democrats back to office tomorrow. Once they both find a way to leave Iraq, it will be a race between Gop and Dems as to whom cares the least about the Iraqi people left behind.

Chavez in Nicaragua

And pretty much that is what happened yesterday in Nicaragua: ennui brought back Ortega to power as the political class that has ruled for twelve years sunk into personal preservation at all costs before blocking the return of a XX century dinosaur to office.

I am neither surprised nor really upset: Nicaragua is truly a case of a country who deserves what is coming their way. Corrupt Aleman, former president of Nicaragua had, no qualms in dividing his party to avoid going to jail when his successor tried to take steps to bring Nicaragua to a more modern age where accountability is de rigueur. As the situation got worse and worse for Aleman he went to the devil and made a pact with the Sandinistas. See, the Sandinistas cannot return to power ever because the constitution previewed a two round balloting and Ortega, their perennial candidate, aging, accused of all sorts of crimes from stealing to sleeping with underage girls, is thus justly unable to reach that 50% magic mark.

Well, the price paid by Aleman was to weaken the judicial system to escape real punishment and to allow the end of second round balloting by putting the magical number at 40%. And yesterday Ortega seems to have won with not even 41 % while the divided right combined would have taken more than 50%.

The question is how come Nicaraguans did give a 40% to Ortega. The answer is pretty simple, Nicaraguans are perhaps the country which most resembles Venezuela, very Caribbean (or at least much more Caribbean oriented than the rest of Central America except for Panama) and a country whose history has crated a similar political reflex in the populace: people in Nicaragua vote for whomever seems to be able to give the most handouts. When the US was backing the contras and the Liberals, well, they turned to the Liberals to receive the expected handouts that never came. Nicaragua is now the second poorest country of the hemisphere and nobody can quite figure where all the US help ended up, except for some in Aleman’s pocket. Now appears Chavez promising to give lots of money to Ortega and Nicaraguan people went back, at least some, to Ortega.

Thus for once Chavez can claim a success in a foreign election, but curiously not really because of him or his ideology: just because Nicaraguans vote like many Venezuelans do, for whomever promises them the best free populist ride. Nicaragua had Somoza we had Gomez. Venezuela had AD populism and Nicaragua had Sandinista radical populism. Nicaragua had incompetent and corrupt Liberals and Sandinsitas, Venezuela had not very competent but equally corrupt AD and Copei. Both fell into the hands of Chavez as the US lost interest in them, taking both of them for granted. With all historical proportions guarded from the previous oversimplification, the reader will be able to see that the political history of both countries could not have but created the same type of electorate.

Thus when I see Nicaragua today I might actually see Venezuela’s future, where a core of hard core chavistas (or Sandinistas) that always have at least 30% of the electorate comes back to power cyclically after the right wing parties fail miserably to bring solutions to the never ending crisis that none of them really wants to face. Slowly Nicaragua and Venezuela will go the way of Haiti, a failed state that is held together by some strange leader mystical aura.

PS: the stupidity of CNN anchormen sometimes is shocking. In CNN en español, Carlos Montero this morning was pressing real hard some “expert”. See, the guy that apparently knew a little bit on Nicaragua was trying to explain stuff. But Montero relentlessly was asking what the Bush administration would do. I swear it, he stopped short of asking when the Marines would land in Managua lake shore. Now, that could be a valid question except that only 14% of ballots had been counted at that time and it was a tad early to proclaim Ortega the winner. Not mentioning that if the Marines have not yet landed in Venezuela where the US has real interests, they certainly will not land in Nicaragua of whom they have all but given hope.