Op-Ed

 

A Year in Office, Fernando

 

Lugo's Jury Still Out

  When he took office one year ago August 15, President Fernando Lugo of Paraguay, the leftist Roman Catholic bishop-turned-political activist, promised big changes in the way the country would be run. He said he would govern for the poor and the dispossessed and end a culture of corruption and paternalism that had defined the tiny South American nation since the days of Dictator Alfredo Stroessner. His election was greeted at home with euphoria and jubilation and with optimism abroad. His victory was a virtual “grito de libertad” against the traditional bosses of the Colorado Party machine because the candidate’s power base – for the first time in Paraguayan history – comprised students, intellectuals, artists, peasants and a cross-section of the Paraguayan middle class fed up with the graft and cynicism of two centuries of top-down government by-the-few and for-the-few.

  After a year, the jury is still out on whether Lugo has begun to meet the needs and hopes of his  countrymen, and even whether he has the character or the political skills to do so. In his first year in office, Lugo has experienced some setbacks that have called into question his honesty, his morals and his intelligence. Fortunately for the president, Lugo recently also has had a couple of major successes that have re-energized his followers and given many Paraguayans a renewed hope that their president has what it takes.

   Lugo assumed the presidency as head of a de-facto political coalition of small parties and disaffected groups, and he has faced the customary challenges of trying to legislate without a majority in the national congress. He has a vice-president from a major political party who would rather be president, and the executive branch must deal with the tepid support of congressional leaders who almost invariably believe they could lead the nation more effectively than the president. Lugo has shuffled cabinet members and other major appointees as he has moved to retain a semblance of unity in his ragtag coalition and minimize the power of his opponents.

  Lugo spent much of his first year trying to redefine Paraguay in the eyes of the world, focusing on building new relationships with the United States and President Obama, who also was elected on promises of hope and change, and with Paraguay’s powerful big neighbors, Brazil and Argentina. He also steered his new administration through the tricky shoals of the increasingly polarized political environment in Latin America, in which a group of vocal provocateurs, led by Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez, is intent on building a new socialist power bloc accompanied frequently by populist anti-American rhetoric. Lugo has done well not to associate himself exclusively either with the Chavista group or their nemesis, the United States.

  Then along comes the presidential paternity scandal. In April, a Paraguayan woman came forward claiming Lugo had fathered her child while he was a bishop (he left the Church to run for president). After skirting the issue for a week, Lugo admitted to the claim and accepted responsibility for the child. Since then, two other women have claimed they had children by Lugo. Though what seemed like a scandal that might rock his presidency has become just another political challenge to deal with, Lugo’s image at home and overseas has been tainted.

   Still, in the months since the scandal broke Lugo has had two significant successes: At the end of April, in Buenos Aires, Paraguay and Bolivia formally signed a pact establishing definitive boundaries in the Chaco region. The two countries fought a protracted and costly war along their common frontier from 1932 to 1935 that killed as many as 100,000. Both Presidents Lugo and Evo Morales of Bolivia were heralded as statesmen and peacemakers after the pact.

  More importantly, after months of negotiations with the government of Brazil, Lugo in July managed to work out a new agreement on revenue sharing at the massive bi-national Itaipu dam electricity generating station. The original agreement, worked out when the dam was built and military regimes ruled in both nations, was lopsided in its distribution of revenue in favor of Brazil, and Lugo had made renegotiation of the agreement a centerpiece of his foreign policy. The new pact promises to bring tens of millions of additional dollars to cash-strapped Paraguay, and likely will give Lugo additional financial wiggle room in his efforts to bring about social reforms in the country.

  Now, Lugo must get back to work on the domestic front, where landless peasants and the urban poor continue to demand that he address their valid concerns. Demonstrations have been growing throughout the country, and Lugo has begun discussions with representatives of these groups. The test of his presidency will be how well the “bishop of the poor” meets his challenges at home, not just abroad.

A new caudillo in Nicaragua?

20 July 2009

 

Thirty years ago, on July 19, 1979, Sandinista revolutionaries in Nicaragua defeated the brutal and corrupt U.S.-supported dictator Anastasio Somoza. Then came the Contra civil war, followed by 16 years of corrupt and ineffective governments formed by other political parties. Now, once again, a Sandinista government is in power, led by former rebel-turned-politician Daniel Ortega. These have been tumultuous and tortured years for Nicaragua.

Over the weekend, government celebrations featured speeches and a mass rally. Not everyone was celebrating, however. Ortega wants to change the laws to allow him to run for the presidency again, or to become prime minister. But many former Sandinistas leaders are asking: “What happened to the revolution?”

In a series of interviews recently in Managua and around the country, they and other critics accused Ortega of turning his back on the poor, allowing a corrupt system of patronage to grow, and illegally enriching himself and his followers. They say Ortega has turned into another Somoza, a caudillo – the traditional Latin American strongman who seizes and holds power through graft, brute force and charisma.

The government says such accusations are false and that the critics are simply out-of-power wannabes. Accusing Ortega of being another Somoza may be a stretch, but it shows how divided Nicaraguans are 30 years after their revolution.

Americans tend to look at history with a very short view and ignore the longer historical perspective. When they see Ortega and the Sandinistas today, they often see a leftist radical in the same camp as Hugo Chavez of Venezuela and Fidel Castro of Cuba -- a threat to American interests. They do not see the more than 100 years of American occupation of Nicaragua or meddling in its affairs. Over many decades, the presence of U.S. Marines on Nicaraguan soil created a strong sense of nationalism and outrage in Nicaraguans of all political leanings.

The Sandinistas won their revolution – only the third in Latin America in the 20th Century, after the Bolivian revolution of 1952 and the Cuban revolution of 1959 – with near-total support of the country’s population. They did so with arms and money from Venezuela, Panama and Cuba, and with moral and logistical support from Costa Rica and Mexico and from many leftist sympathizers around the world, including in the United States.

When the Sandinistas triumphed, Nicaraguans were united as at no other moment in their history. As Rodrigo Carazo, the former president of Costa Rica who helped the Sandinistas arm themselves against Somoza by allowing his country to be a transshipment zone, told me recently in San Jose: “The whole country was anti-Somocista.”

That unity did not last long. Within a year, the more radical Sandinistas in the government had become dominant. Then, days after Ronald Reagan came to office in January 1981, the United States announced a fierce and unbending opposition to the Nicaraguan regime. The Reagan Administration organized and funded the Contra war, turning the country again into a civil war zone to expel the  Sandinistas. By 1989, the Sandinistas and Contras had fought to a standstill, and mediation led by President Oscar Arias of Costa Rica, the same man who is now attempting to mediate a peaceful solution to the very dangerous political stalemate in Honduras, helped bring an end to war and elections in 1990.

Ortega, perhaps rightly, argues that if the Americans had helped the Sandinistas they would not have to seek assistance from Cuba and the Soviets. Some State Department officials were arguing that same thing at the time, but it’s water under the bridge now. Today, Ortega’s government is cohesive, in control of the state apparatus and government-run media, and has learned how to confront its political opposition and neutralize the independent media, which is almost universally critical of the regime.

Sandinistas governments have followed through on key promises of the revolution: free education, free health care and expanded literacy campaigns. Today, though, the state is increasingly authoritarian. The Sandinista Party, which was formed out of the core of the old rebel army, is integrated wholly into the government and appears loyal to Ortega. Sandinistas get government jobs and government contracts, and those communities where Sandinistas have been elected get the big public-works projects.

Ortega has stacked the country’s electoral and judicial institutions with pro-government loyalists, and when the regime conducted municipal elections last November both the United States and the European Union cried fraud. Huey Long would be proud.

The Ortega government also is hermetic and inaccessible. Ortega’s wife and companion of 30-plus years, Rosario Murillo, controls access to Ortega and other top government officials. She seldom lowers the barriers, and only then to “friendly” journalists. The last time an independent journalist interviewed Ortega was in March of this year, when David Frost flew to Managua to speak with the president. Sadly, what resulted was an interview that can only be characterized as a “puff” piece.

Undeniably, Daniel Ortega is a national hero to many Nicaraguans. He led a force of rebels that abolished a violent dictatorship and brought some social justice to what was essentially a semi-feudal system. His followers call him simply “Daniel.” But there also are many who have left the Sandinista Party, unhappy with their former leader. Many of them recently formed a new party, the Sandinista Renovation Movement, which plans to challenge Ortega in the 2010 elections.

Ortega appears more each day to have fallen victim to an old malady in Latin America: the love of power and a conviction by those in power that only they know what’s best for the people. As a result, a new word has entered the lexicon in Nicaragua. The once-hated dictatorial system that ruled from the 1930s until 1979 was known as “Somocismo.” Nicaraguans now talk about “Ortegismo.” Some are even on a first-name basis with “Danielismo.”

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Obama’s Latin American Challenges

January 2009

All eyes this month are on Cuba, which on January 1st celebrated the 50th anniversary of the Fidel Castro-led  revolution. President-elect Barack Obama is under pressure to  renew full diplomatic ties between Havana and Washington, and to ease the U.S. economic embargo against the island nation.

In coming months, however, Obama will face, in addition to the “Cuba question,” a number of other challenges and crises throughout Latin America that have grown or festered for years. Moving quickly and decisively to address those issues offers the new administration opportunities to improve regional political and security conditions and America’s image and stature in the hemisphere.

From Argentina to Venezuela, Bolivia to Nicaragua, and Chile to Paraguay, leftist and left-of-center governments are in the ascendancy. Economic stagnation, poverty and political instability are endemic. And drug trafficking and its accompanying violence are increasingly a threat to internal stability and peace. Working with our Latin American neighbors, the Obama team has an opportunity to re-engage Latin America’s governments and its people in partnerships based on mutual respect and mutual interests.

In Cuba, after decades of railing against the Castro regime, a more pragmatic approach is called for. Raul Castro is not Fidel, and Cuba is poised on the edge of change. We should help Cubans define their own future, let go of the anti-communist past, and embrace them as friends.

In Venezuela, strongman Hugo Chavez has been a thorn in Washington’s side since he first took power in 1998. Brash, intemperate and demagogic, his hold on power nevertheless is not monolithic. Venezuelans are smart and wary people, and, as recent municipal elections have shown, they don’t love their tin-pot dictators for long. Washington should wait out the tempest in Caracas, lower the rhetorical heat and remember that in Venezuela, as elsewhere in the region, governments come and go.

In Chile, socialist Michelle Bachelet won office in 2006. She governs in a country with the healthiest and most open economy in South America. Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, of Argentina, leads the center-left Peronist Party and won election in 2007. Fernando Lugo, a former radical Catholic priest, took office as president of Paraguay in August of this year. All have been popularly elected in free and open elections, and deserve the support and respect of Washington, whether or not they choose to befriend an isolated communist Cuba, or thumb their noses at Washington’s formerly unchallenged regional hegemony.

Rather than turning away or undermining these leaders, America should embrace them as allies and fellow democrats.

In Bolivia, socialist Evo Morales is a smart fellow and, like most Latin American radicals, doesn’t necessarily believe all of his own rhetoric. He is caught between those who want to return the country to the statist ways of the 1950s and those eastern Bolivia business interests who seek to create a capitalist mecca. Evo already has learned he cannot dictate radical change to his people without widespread and violent opposition. Washington should give him limited support for social reforms, continue to maintain contacts with the opposition and wait for a more moderate, transitional figure in Bolivia to surface as Morales’ successor.

Brazil, where Luiz Inacio (Lula) da Silva has governed since 2002, probably represents the most important opportunity in the region for American influence. Formerly a radical labor leader and head of the Brazilian Workers Party, Lula has governed from the center and is a moderating influence on his fellow South American leaders. We must support him in those efforts and embrace Brazil as the economic powerhouse that is has become.

Meanwhile, Mexico, long ruled by a stable series of governments under the PRI party, has entered a period of political instability with an explosion of drug-related violence and corruption at its core. Thousands have been killed in the U.S.-led “War on Drugs” in the past three years, and the ability of the Mexico’s central government to deal with the problem is now in question. Mexico cannot continue to fight a drug war on its turf while America and Europe continue to be the main markets for those drugs. Our futures are intimately bound together. We must reassess this disastrous drug war and consider other options, including legalization.

Washington’s relations with Latin America are both critical and complex, and they are fraught with risk and potential reward. Several immediate steps by a new Obama Administration would show Latin America that Washington means to play a different game: Closing the infamous prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, renewing full diplomatic relations with Cuba, reviewing the efficacy of the “War on Drugs,” and restoring our commitment to a prosperous, democratic and sovereign Latin America, all would be big steps forward.