From: rich@pencil.cs.missouri.edu (Rich Winkel)
Newsgroups: misc.activism.progressive
Subject: NICANET HOTLINE -- 07/27/92
Date: 30 Jul 92 00:54:38 GMT
Followup-To: alt.activism.d
Organization: PACH
Originator: rich@pencil.cs.missouri.edu

/** reg.nicaragua: 100.0 **/
** Topic: NICANET HOTLINE -- 07/27/92 **
** Written  9:10 am  Jul 28, 1992 by nicanet in cdp:reg.nicaragua **
            NICARAGUA NETWORK HOTLINE ** 202-544-9360
 
                         July 27, 1992
 
You have reached the Nicaragua Network Hotline recorded Monday, 
July 27, 1992.   To reach our office, call: 202-544-9355.
 
Topics covered in this hotline include: Organizing continues to 
pressure State Department to release Nicaraguan aid; Bus driver 
and ex-army officer protests turn violent; Comptroller General 
cites Lacayo in corruption probe; and, July 19 celebration 
exceeds expectations.
 
The State Department continues to hold up release of $116 million 
in appropriated aid to Nicaragua.  Disbursement of the aid was 
originally blocked by Wisconsin Congressman David Obey.  Obey has 
long since released his hold, but the State Department continues 
to use the aid delay to pressure the Chamorro government to cave 
in to demands of the US and Nicaraguan right-wing to reverse 
Sandinista land reform, purge Sandinistas from the army and 
police, and privatize the banking system.  Deputy Majority Whip 
Martin Sabo (D-5th, MN) has written a letter to Secretary of 
State James Baker calling for the immediate release of the aid.  
Sabo, who is on the Appropriations and Intelligence Committees, 
is asking other members of Congress to sign on to his letter.  We 
encourage you to call your Congressional representative 
immediately and ask her or him to sign on to Sabo's letter.
 
The continuing hold on aid contributes to an attitude growing in 
many segments of Nicaraguan society that the suffering caused by 
two years of US and international lender imposed structural 
adjustment policies is not resulting in the expected economic 
recovery.  The social consensus which resulted from national 
dialogue talks in mid-1990 is coming unraveled as people go 
hungry and jobless and see no end in sight to their suffering.  
Last week students protesting inadequate university budgets 
continued to march, erect barricades and burn tires.  Bus drivers 
in Managua who work for the Ministry of Transportation struck 
over the creation of competing private bus routes.  And 2,000 
newly laid off army officers demonstrated to dramatize their 
demand for treatment equal to their previously laid off comrades.  
With employment and underemployment continuing at 60%, the former 
officers understand that there is virtually no chance that they 
will be able to find a job.  The army lay-offs bring Nicaragua's 
armed forces down to 18,500, far less than most of the armies in 
the region and only slightly larger than Costa Rica which 
allegedly has no army.  Nicaraguan soldiers are paid only about 
$50 per month and even a captain's salary is only $250 a month.  
The demonstration turned violent when the former soldiers came to 
the support of bus drivers who police were trying to prevent from 
marching to the headquarters of the Sandinista Workers Central 
(CST).  Over the afternoon of July 20 and the next 24 hours, 
several civilians and at least 40 police were wounded, 7 of them 
seriously, and 7 children were hospitalized due to tear gas.  The 

confrontations were serious and unfortunate.  They do show, by 
the fact that the police did not kill anyone and suffered high 
casualties themselves, that they have not yet been turned into a 
repressive force in spite of US pressure.  The former officer's 
demands remain unresolved, but the seriousness of the clashes did 
cause the Transportation Ministry to undertake serious 
negotiations with the bus drivers which led to a settlement of 
the bus strike.
 
Also last week Comptroller General Guillermo Potoy, a protege of 
National Assembly President Alfredo Cesar, issued his report on 
government corruption. He accused Minister of the Presidency 
Antonio Lacayo of hindering his investigation.  Potoy found a 
"presumption of penal responsibility" against former government 
official Antonio Ibarra and 21 other government employees 
including 5 UNO members of the National Assembly.  Potoy, who is 
president of Cesar's Social Democratic Party (PSD), also accused 
Lacayo of "presumed administrative responsibility" and even being 
a "co-author" of Ibarra's alleged misuse of funds and called for 
Chamorro to fire him.  The issue involved concerns the alleged 
bribery of National Assembly members of the so-called Center 
Group of UNO parliamentarians who voted with the FSLN to uphold 
Chamorro's veto of Cesar's property bill which would have 
expropriated properties given to thousands of Nicaraguans under 
Sandinista land reform.  There is little doubt that a good deal 
of money changed hands as Chamorro and Cesar contested over 
Cesar's property bill.  The allegations of corruption by UNO 
government officials dwarf allegations against Sandinistas in the 
so-called pinata.  The present controversy should be seen 
primarily in terms of the on-going efforts by Cesar to wrest 
effective governing control from Chamorro and Lacayo.  The 
bribery charges began soon after the revelation that the CIA 
spent $600,000 in an illegal covert operation to influence the 
1990 election.  Those funds were channeled through Cesar and 
Potoy and if proven, could cost Cesar his seat in the National 
Assembly.  Ibarra, who got his position through Cesar, was one of 
the most sticky fingered officials in government.  Ibarra, in a 
statement notarized by the Nicaraguan Counsel in Miami where he 
fled when allegations of corruption first became public, stated 
that Potoy and other PSD leaders had offered to clear him if he 
would implicate Lacayo in the scandal.  And, one of the accused 
UNO delegates in the Assembly, Andres Robles while denying that 
he accepted a bribe accused Cesar as being the one who tried to 
bribe him.  Chamorro was unmoved by the call to fire Lacayo, 
telling reporters if Lacayo goes, "Violeta goes too. I say 
publicly now that I am not substituting him."
 
While the UNO coalition was swallowing its own tail, 45-50,000 
Nicaraguans filled the Plaza of the Revolution on July 19 to 
celebrate the 13th anniversary of the Sandinista Revolution.  The 
crowd even outstripped the expectations of the organizers. One 
Sandinista leader told a reporter, "This time you can't say we 
brought them here in state vehicles." Daniel Ortega asked the 
crowd if they want a police force "professionalized" by the 

United States so that it acted like the Los Angeles Police 
Department.  The answer was a resounding no! At the time of the 
July 19 celebration, the third meeting of the Latin American 
leftist political parties and movements involved in the "Sao 
Paulo Forum" was underway in Managua.  The meeting included 
representatives of 60 political parties and movements and 23 
observer delegations from Europe, Asia, Africa and North America 
working to develop positive alternative to the failed neo-liberal 
economic policies promoted by the US and international lenders.  
While the UNO forces supported by the US continue to mire 
themselves in corruption and fratricide, the FSLN continues to 
search for solutions to the suffering of the poor majority of 
Nicaraguans.
 
To become a supporter and receive our publications and mailings, 
please contact us.  The Nicaragua Network's address is: 1247 E 
St., SE, Washington, DC  20003; our phone: 202-544-9355.

** End of text from cdp:reg.nicaragua **
Newsgroups: misc.activism.progressive