by Nick Cooke
Miami Dolphins tackle Managua
Flipper, Betty and Skippy touched down in Managua in September and continued to draw decent crowds late into the year. With seaquarium ventures, the goal is a good kick-off. That it was. Streets for blocks around the circus tent dolphinarium were packed with cars huddled under street lights, with coupon-issuing car watchfolk flitting from one to the other like wide ends looking to receive, especially at closing time.
Pay cut slashed
A draft proposal for the 2004 National Budget generously proposed to reduce what are commonly called mega-salaries by 10% for top rankers, from President down to National Assembly legislators. The latter have shown reluctance to approve the idea. They countered with a proposal to eliminate collecting pensions for past positions while currently holding a different public office.
President Bolaños gets his pension from being vice president, plus his salary for being President, nearly US$20,000 a month. Former President Daniel Ortega gets his Deputy pay, plus an ex-prez pension, for a total of well over US$10,000.
Recent figures show more than half the population of Nicaragua gets by with less than $2 a day income (one worldwide definition of the poverty line), while around a third can count on less than $1 a day.
Its impossible to check, but former President Arnoldo Alemán could be collecting his ex-prez pension, plus National Assembly deputy pay, plus pay as deputy in the Central American Parliament. A quick count would put his monthly potential pay at somewhere near the entire annual budget for capital expenditures in a municipality like Terrabona.
Meanwhile, members of the National Assembly´s Economic Commission listened to the army and the police explain how they need more money to do their job, or public safety could be compromised. One deputy on that Commission remarked in a TV interview, “The money has to come from somewhere.”
Reforms a la Suprême
Nicaragua´s Justice System seems to have placed itself in seemingly self-perpetuating paralysis. A shortage of Supreme Court Magistrates for meeting Constitutional dictate and the revised interpretation of quorum has yet to be resolved satisfactorily. Due last July, appointments to the handful of Appellate Courts had not been made by end of the rainy season. Questions of court composition can constantly be raised by the legislature to question the content of court rulings.
Reform has been called for in various documents for dealing with income from international cooperation. That means the legislature drafting laws to handle the money, discrepancies over which would have to be heard by the hamstrung Court. Lawmakers given license to rewrite law without court supervision… is that tantamount to letting the fox loose in the henhouse?
There s a spectre haunting…
Little-by-little, creeping in slowly like slime over wet pavement, crime rears its ugly head. Recent reports of crimes against tourists —including a near-fatal stabbing of a Dutch tourist in Granada-have one common element. The victims were walking, usually alone, late at night. It is advisable to take taxis after ten o´clock, and avoid poorly lit areas after dark.
Odds are that some development theorist has a mathematical theorem or two for calculating crime rates in relation to other indexes for poverty and desire in relation to development processes. Incidents of bag snatches from beaches, the theft of rent-a-bikes, losers in groups accosting women alone all grow as disparities in resources increase.
Got SAMs?
US top-rankers made A disarming proposal to Nicaragua: get rid of over 2000 SAM-7 (surface-to-air) shoulder launched rockets. A four-star general made an attempt in August, then Secretary of State Colin Powell tried again in early November, tactfully suggesting that storing these missiles puts a strain on the budget.
Though SAMs are only good against low-flying sub-sonic aircraft, Nicaragua’s National Army is reluctant to lose its mobile anti-aircraft weaponry. Both Honduras and Colombia have US-made jet fighters, plus a handful of French Mirage fighters and both are making claims to Nicaragua’s Caribbean offshore. The sabers rattle from time to time.
A rational proposal was made, a buy-back scheme. Swap the SAMs to the US for farm equipment. Sort of a modern-day version of the Quaker dream of turning swords into plowshares. No one embraces it so far.
SAMs are only the tip of a cold iceberg of long-seated distrust. Former not-so-masterminds behind the Iran-Contragate, a.k.a. guns-for-drugs debacle of the late ‘80s, are now in key posts in the Latin America wing of the US State Department. They worry about a possible Sandinista revival, democratic style. Point man Dan Fisk openly counseled local politicians in early November to forget differences in order to avoid having that particular Washington phobia appear.
Everything is on the table weapons-wise. Next up… AK-47s and RPG-7s. If only Nicaragua’s neighbors would follow suit.
Stone walls do not a prison make
Nor iron bars a jail. And so former President Arnoldo Alemán continues to bide time in the confines of a Nicalit pre-fab apartment overlooking the backside of the luxury Intercontinental Hotel (Pyramid). With the capital’s media present, prosecuting Judge Juana Méndez gave him a mobile phone, to the surprise of his police escort. It was not a prepaid plan. Some propose in the name of justice, that all prisoners in the country’s jails should have access to at least a pay phone.
The cell phone-in-the-cell incident didn’t last long. Prison authorities shortly restricted telephone privileges to ten minutes between 5 and 6 in the afternoon. Arnoldo turned over the phone, denying himself even that right, ever a showman in making a martyr of himself. Back in August, the corpulent ex-prez almost went on a hunger strike, too.
Ex-Presidential buddy Byron Jerez has been (or is) ordered free by Judge Méndez. She ruled against her own previous ruling on the matter of freedom while awaiting trial, something not allowed under recently-approved legislation on money laundering, at the core of the first round of charges laid against both Jerez and Alemán.
Superhighway extension
The almost-autobahn south out of Managua ending near the Ticuantepe Junction is being extended further down the road… to Masaya… then to Granada… eventually. Expect delays.
You might see local entrepreneurs selling tickets on the pool for just how many sleeping policemen (skinny speed bumps), sleeping commissioners (well-fed speed bumps), and roundabouts will be laid by the day of its official inauguration. Deadline for submission is February 2005, just in time for the 23rd (más o menos) issue of Between the Waves.
Forest Gimp
Tracts in central Nicaragua are being offered on the Internet. Indigenous lands have yet to be officially demarcated. Reserves, preserves, and conservation areas, all fall under the notoriously understaffed National Parks Service of the Ministry of Environment.
Underpaid forestry officials who don’t really know if they are under the Environment or Economy ministry are fair game in the web of deceit enveloping the development of the lumber and wood products industry in Nicaragua.
A recent ban by Honduras on mahogany logging increases pressure on Nicaraguan supplies.
Those in charge, seemingly ignorant of carbon offset markets and green bonds, let alone the growing desire for so-called “certified” wood for eco-conscious consumers in the 1st World, bring to mind the old saw that they still do not see the forest for the trees.
Spend as much time and money on setting up precious wood farms on an abundance of idle land “already-deforested and currently devoid of economic advantages” and there would be wood to spare.
Nicaragua´s forest policy is as undeveloped as the minds of those who plot profit from its virgin nature.
6% of what…?
Annual street protests came early this year, probably because the government wants to get its 2004 budget in order on time, as per national legislation and supplications from lending/grant institutions and members of the donor community.
Six percent is a magic number consigned in the Constitution for the budget share for Ahigher education,@ as defined by the National Council of Universities (CNU). As ever, discrepancy rules over whether it is 6% of the money spent from government revenue collections; or 6% of the money spent by the government, including foreign aid.
Nicaragua has been encouraged to invest in developing the human potential of its increasing population. Lowering the functional illiteracy rate and having universal access to education are listed among the 2015 Millennium Development Goals for the World-as-we-know-it.
Percentage budgetary breakdowns are de rigeur when it comes to education funding. Priorities? Primary, secondary, and higher education consume the lion´s share of the education allocation. Technical and vocational barely figure.
Take note those with vehicle access, during the protest season, 6% of the time, it is 6% more difficult to get along the by-ways around the university protest area near centrally-located Rubén Darío Roundabout.
More paved roads
Nicaragua´s recently-presented National Development Plan contains an impressive list of roadways projects for which financing has already been arranged. Start dates vary, likely depending on availability of equipment and crews. According to the Plan, lots of kilometers of paved road are to be worked on between now and 2005, and 100´s of kilometers of trunk roads will be upgraded or driven through into the hinterland.
The Nicaragua Pacific Coast Highway from Masachapa all the way down to Ostional near the frontier with the Guanacaste Province of Costa Rica is right there on the list. The hope is for a two-lane shouldered blacktop and several lookout stops over the Pacific Coast artery, somewhat akin to California 101. Watch out for bicycle rallies.
