by Nick Cooke

Raindrops keep falling…

Ahead of schedule, grey clouds and showers began sweeping over Nicaragua earlier than forecast by the national meteorological office. Residents rush to repair roofs. Cable services experience interruptions in satellite signals. Power surges and brownouts become daily fare as moisture seeps into electricity transmission grids. Umbrella and windshield wiper salesmen crowd the stoplights. Hurricane forecasts are dicey, but it is expected to have more than the usual number of tropical storms swirl through the Caribbean in the months to come.

Coalitioned out

Nicaragua left Iraq for lack of funds. Spain left after a change of government and a train terror attack. El Salvador pulled out shortly thereafter. For the US-UK efforts to form a “coalition of the willing,” backing is lacking in this region. They got out just in time, before the prisoner abuse scandals hit the news. In the case of these countries, war does mean never having to say you’re sorry.

Millennium Challenge

Nicaragua is one of 16 countries to benefit from the $1.1 billion to be donated by the United States to countries working for economic development and poverty reduction. Each country must present projects for approval by the USAID, projects that would lead to Nicaragua achieving the internationally-established Millennium Development Goals by 2015. The Civil Society Coordinator, a body grouping together hundreds of Nicaraguan non-governmental organizations or NGOs, has called for transparency in the management of these funds. In other words, no more vacation homes for government officials, like the one former tax minister Byron Jérez built in Pochomil with Hurricane Mitch relief.

Pay me by the river

A Nicaraguan Army garrison commander along the Río San Juan where it borders with Costa Rica took the initiative to charge a toll of 25 córdobas to anyone from Costa Rica wanting to travel along the river. Nicaragua and Costa Rica had agreed after the last round of this dispute to lift the toll until 2005. Reportedly, that commander is being disciplined, but the incident peeled back the thin veneer of cross-border civility glossing over a long-running dispute between the two neighbours.

Nicaragua’s Most Unwanted (in the USA)

Supreme Court Magistrate Rafael Solis is the first Nicaraguan official affected by a recent US State Department policy of denying entry visas to those suspected of involvement in corrupt practices. Then, Sandinista judge Ileana Pérez had her entry privileges to the United States revoked. Before that State Department policy, other prominent Nicaraguan figures had had their visas lifted. Arnoldo Alemán´s former partner-in-embezzlement, Byron Jérez, currently under some form of imprisonment was one. FSLN parliamentary leader Bayardo Arce is another. Amelia, Arnoldo’s sister was denied the visa she used to go for medical treatments and allegedly launder her brother’s ill-gotten gains. Then she died (R.I.P.). Word has it more Magistrates will soon be unable to visit Disney World, condo complexes, and banks in the USofA.

Destroy them again: SAMs

Nicaragua’s stockpile of several thousand surface-to-air missiles (SAM-7s) was reduced recently by 333 amidst some heated discussions about sacrificing national defense capacity. President Bolaños has invited heads-of-state from around the region to witness the next round of SAMs, scheduled for late July. Hope is that it will lead to reciprocity and a reasonable balance of weapons in Central America. No other country is eliminating any weaponry. Luigi Einaudi of the Organization of American States lauded Nicaragua’s action as being both “an exception and an example.”

Alphabet soup or political mishmash?

Municipal elections are nearing, though the possibility of postponement still hovers in the rarified atmosphere of Liberal/Sandinista negotiations over the fate of the nation. Political parties, alliances, and coalitions are forming all around Nicaragua’s three- or more dimensioned political spectrum. Somewhere around 35 formations have varying combinations of letters and colors to denote the “difference” of their political slant. Most of these so-called “parties” appear to be no more than a handful of wannabe power brokers looking to ride with one or another major party, promising to deliver the votes of their friends and relatives and get something in return after the elections, like a soft job in some obscure government department.

Judging the Judges

Rafael Solis, a Supreme Court Magistrate, was accused of influence peddling in regards to a multi-million dollar lawsuit involving two figures: one an ex-banker and Solis’s godson; the other an active banker, Roberto Zamora of BanCentro. Local commentators and caricaturists were quick to insinuate that part of the Sandinista election funding depends on the outcome. Solis denied the allegation and said in his defense that Zamora had tried to bribe him for a favorable ruling in that case.

Regarding the accusation by Zamora, National Assembly Deputy Carlos Gadea (PLC Liberal, Alemán tendency) said, “It´s public knowledge that political factors are influencing more than legal ones in this case.” Another PLC Deputy, Wilfredo Navarro said that Solis, “is one of those pointed to publicly as a protector of judicial officers who have degraded the legal function in the country.”

Of late, Magistrate Solis is high profile in judicial affairs and the question of the impartiality of justice. He was cited last year by the Office of the Procurator-General for allegations of practicing law and taking sides in legal disputes complete with videos. The charges never saw the light of day.

In legal circles, the influence of the Magister is the subject of much informal discussion. He is in charge of the Supreme Court Disciplinary Commission that receives complaints and charges against judges and lawyers who act with impropriety. But Solis’s alleged pulling of the strings of judges and their alternates and wielding of influence, reportedly in favor of the Sandinista Party, put into question his capacity to rule impartially. This should be cause for concern among his handlers. Given that Nicaragua has an expressed desire to be a country with the rule of law, perhaps it’s time for the FSLN to cut their losses.

Water, water, not everywhere

Of all the planet’s water, 97% is in oceans, with a large part of all the fresh water locked up in glaciers. Demand for water increases with population and development and countries must try to manage this limited resource.

Legislation has been drafted regarding water in general, but has yet to be applied in any effective fashion. Overuse and conflicting use of Nicaragua’s waters will continue. And parallel to the old refrain, people will miss their water once the well, river, aquifer and/or reservoir run dry.

Waste not, want not:

Recycling refuse

Development spawns consumption and consumption spawns garbage as Nicaragua takes its tentative steps into the global consumer economy.

But a new use can be found for virtually everything. And that’s what is being proposed with a new internationally-funded initiative to foster the recycling of plastics, paper products and glass, along with possible energy-producing options fueled by organic waste. Though small-scale, it is a first step along a road long not taken.

At a recent ribbon-cutting ceremony in Granada, President Enrique Bolaños announced elements of a plan to pay people for plastic bags and bottles brought in for recycling. Details of just how this is to be effected are to come.

The economic embargo applied by the US government in the 1980s to pressure the Sandinista regime was a phenomenal impulse for recycling. You could hardly buy anything – beer, rum, ketchup, cooking oil, sometimes even mustard – without presenting the equivalent empty receptacle, often with its corresponding lid. Either that, or take it away in a baggie. Chipped beer bottles were cut off to make drinking glasses. Very little ended up in the trash heap.

Times have changed and there is now an abundance of things to throw away, to the point that schoolchildren joke that the national flower is a plastic bag in a ditch or flapping in the breeze on a barbed-wire fence.

Proposals for processing recyclables and paying people for the waste they turn in to a center should become practice. An anti-litter campaign would also be welcome. But as is too often the case, one hand undoes what the other one has done. The Victoria and Toña brewing company´s recent announcement of non-returnable bottles will surely add to the volume of solid waste piling up in (un)sanitary landfills throughout the country.

Water fights

Residents and the local government of Somotillo were hot under the collar this past dry season over what is happening with the Río Negro where it used to mark the border with Honduras. The river course changed markedly with Hurricane Mitch in 1998.

Somotillo’s authorities are almost literally up in arms over irrigation dam projects underway in Honduras that would hold back much of the river’s flow. The Mayor of Somotillo even threatened to blow up the weirs. The federal government says all is in order, that Nicaragua’s water rights are fine. The question is whether there is enough.

Dammed rivers

Near the geographic center of Nicaragua, the Las Canoas artificial lake is at an all-time low due to over-exploitation of the water held back by the dam. Sugarcane and rice are all cultivated under irrigation, while a number of towns rely on the dammed waters of the river for supply.

Draining into Lake Nicaragua, Río Viejo´s waters are also under pressure. They provide for a ydroelectric facility, crop irrigation and regular use by residents, urban and rural. But with more development, there is a question of whether there is enough to go around, especially during the dry season when demand is high and supply is low.

A bit of the old out and in

Former president Arnoldo Alemán must feel a bit like he has been recast into the Godfather movie.  “I thought I was out, and then they brought me back in again” , said Michael Corleone in that celluloid classic, played by Al Pacino. From house arrest to special cell in downtown Managua to house arrest  and now Alemán is back in an institutional surrounding, pacing his private cell with private bathroom and room to hang a hammock in the installations of the Tipitapa prison complex.

Money laundering is at the heart of the charges against Alemán and again like Al Pacino, this time in the classic Scarface, he may well quote Tony Montana: What´s the big deal? This country was built on washing money.

The usual appeals and maneuvers in the National Assembly on behalf of the convicted felon go on and on in attempts to get “Gordoman” back to detention at his home. What happened to the $20 million fine that he is supposed to pay?

Tiscapa: lagoon with a future?

In Managua, one municipal issue is the clean-up of the Tiscapa Lagoon – a former park with crystalline waters, now a murky puddle with rafts of floating garbage, testimony to the ignorance of past city fathers.

A canopy tour operation has been established along the crater walls leading down to water’s edge and Managua Mayor Herty Lewites has declared he will swim in the pond at year’s end, after an ambitious plan to oxygenate and purify its waters with ozone has concluded.

The huge field to the southwest of Tiscapa is currently a hub of activity, with a restaurant and yet another 24-hour gas station and convenience store under construction, all with municipal and Environment Ministry approval.  Eco-activists state that these and other projected investments jeopardize the quality of the lagoon’s waters, claiming that wastes from such operations will eventually percolate down through the fault-ridden subsurface to the volcanic crater lagoon.

Tiscapa Lagoon has a checkered past as a dumping ground. It is a national historical site, in part for having been used to dispose of some victims of Somoza’s torture chambers in the 1970s. And legend has it that the native Indians tossed treasure into its depths to stop the Spanish conquistadores from grabbing it.

In the early 1980s, the Sandinista authorities developed the crater into a city center venue for swimming, dining, and concerts-over-the-waters. Diving from the vertical cliffs into the nearly bottomless blue-green waters was an attraction. A jogging path rounded the interior of the crater. Floating platforms with diving boards provided swimmers with a place to rest.  Some people floated in front of the stage on shore, listening to live music during the weekend daytime concerts.

Samuel Santos, then the mayor, approved the not-so-brilliant idea of running a large storm drain into Tiscapa. It didn’t take long before swimmers were developing fine tissue infections resulting from the human and other waste that was thrown into the drainage ditch. Over the years, a delta of trash grew under the drain’s drop-off to the lagoon.

In the 1990s, those advocating a clean-up gained ground, winning a promise from then Mayor Arnoldo Alemán to divert the drainage channel, a promise that was never kept, though several million córdobas were spent in the meantime. The next Liberal mayor did nothing. And now Herty has been pushed to do something, albeit at the end of his term in office.

With continued pressure from the pro-environment community and from those interested in developing the lagoon for recreational purposes, it may be possible to have Tiscapa revert to a capital swimming hole in which to escape the foundry-esque heat of Managua.

In cold blood

The early May slaying of four police officers in the Bluefields station shocked the nation. The assassins entered the station and somehow duct taped and knifed the victims. It was called a “declaration of war” by organized crime (drug, gun, and illegal immigrant smuggling) against the police.

A $10,000 reward has been posted. Clues and versions are confusing and flow along the columns of daily paper front pages. A manhunt is underway throughout Nicaragua and neighbouring countries. The incident has justifiably caused concern about an increase in violent crime in the country.

Nicaragua has enjoyed the status of being the country with the lowest crime rates in the region. Some analysts say that violence in Nicaragua is less “criminal” and more political, generally occurring around protests of government policy (like the 6% student protests) or during a land dispute.

Much of the nation’s violent behaviour occurs behind the closed doors of a household. There are also near-weekly reports of murders committed in a cantina during a dispute over drinks.

With these cop killings and a spate of other murders, it appears Nicaragua is well on its way to reaching the levels of violence in its neighbours to the north.