TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/031290/0312108.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 16KB | 378 lines

                                                                                NATION, Page 12

But Will It Work?


The answer may depend on the U.S., as Violeta Chamorro tries to
consolidate Nicaraguan democracy after her victory over the
Sandinistas

By JOHANNA MCGEARY -- Reported by Ricardo Chavira and J.F.O.
McAllister/Washington


    Long before the polls closed, the people knew what they had
done. Before the radio began reporting returns, before the
platoons of international observers were totting up their "quick
counts" and the battalions of reporters were frantically calling
in the news, the word had spread across Managua. "We're going
to win!" shouted a woman tending a bubbling cauldron in front
of her house in one of the city's poorest barrios, thought to
be a stronghold of the ruling Sandinistas. The Sandinistas? she
was asked. "No, not those sons of bitches," she spat back. "The
Dona. Dona Violeta."

    In another startling turnaround in an age of startling
surprises, democracy burst forth where everyone least expected
it. Given the chance to vote in an honest and secret election,
Nicaraguans decisively repudiated the Sandinista government,
which the U.S. had been struggling to overthrow for a decade.


    Conservatives and liberals in Washington are already
arguing over who should claim credit for the Sandinistas'
defeat. But nobody really "won" Nicaragua. If the election of
Violeta Barrios de Chamorro as President last week reflected
anything, it was the people's rejection of the pain they have
endured for a decade. Give us a chance, they said. End the war.
Save the economy. The immediate target of their wrath was the
Sandinistas, but the U.S. too bears a share of responsibility.
It now owes Nicaragua generous help if it wants democracy to
flourish.

    Latin America's history is filled with government
reversals, but rarely at the ballot box. Coups, revolutions and
invasions -- often organized by Washington -- are more common
means. Ever since the trauma of Viet Nam, the U.S. has sought
a less direct and costly method to have its way. Where military
force could still do the trick cost effectively, the U.S. was
willing to use it, as in Grenada and Panama. But in Nicaragua,
wittingly or not, Washington stumbled on an arm's-length policy:
wreck the economy and prosecute a long and deadly proxy war
until the exhausted natives overthrow the unwanted government
themselves. For Americans, the cost was minimal. True, bruising
annual battles over Central America splintered Congress, and
the Iran-contra scandal hobbled Ronald Reagan's second term,
but hardly any U.S. soldiers were dying.

    The real burden fell on Nicaragua. The U.S. strategy proved
excruciatingly slow and extremely expensive, and it inflicted
the most pain on the wrong people. The past ten years have
savaged the country's civilians, not its comandantes. Since 1985
Washington has strangled Nicaraguan trade with an embargo. It
has cut off Nicaragua's credit at the World Bank and the
International Monetary Fund. The contra war cost Managua tens of
millions and left the country with wrecked bridges, sabotaged
power stations and ruined farms. The impoverishment of the
people of Nicaragua was a harrowing way to give the National
Opposition Union (U.N.O.) a winning issue.

    No one will ever know if a less hostile American approach or
regional peace negotiations or the inherent flaws of Marxism
might have done the trick more quickly and painlessly. But it
does seem evident that the Sandinistas risked the uncertainties
of the ballot box only after the U.S. stopped financing the
contra war and began suggesting that Managua might profit by
behaving more democratically. George Bush, to his credit,
steered the U.S. into the peace-and-elections program formulated
by Costa Rican President Oscar Arias Sanchez. If one man
deserves acclaim for masterminding this moment, Arias does.

    By then the Sandinistas had little choice. Nicaragua had
been devastated by a 40% drop in GNP, an inflation rate running
at 1,700% a year and constant shortages of food and basic
necessities. At least 30,000 people had been killed in the war,
and 500,000 more had fled. The Soviet Union had not yet
withdrawn its $300 million annual subsidy, but even a fanatical
Sandinista could see that Moscow was retrenching both
financially and politically. Benefactors such as Spain and the
Scandinavian countries also predicated desperately needed
financial help on the holding of a free and fair election.

    The Sandinistas agreed because they thought they would win.
That they lost should not be so surprising. They had thoroughly
mismanaged an economy that was one of Central America's more
prosperous when the Sandinista National Liberation Front
(F.S.L.N.) took power in  1979. They wasted scarce resources
backing other revolutionary movements in the region. They drove
out Nicaragua's middle class with their quirky brand of Marxist
economic dogma. In reaction to the contra threat, they severely
repressed civil liberties. In the end, Nicaraguans voted like
most people -- with their stomachs. "There is not an incumbent
government in Latin America," said William LeoGrande, political
science professor at American University in Washington, "that
could have won re-election with this kind of economy."

    To many, the election result was simply further proof of
the collapse of communism. This was, after all, the first time
that indigenous Marxist revolutionaries who had seized power
submitted themselves to the ballot box -- and lost. But the
lesson may simply be that dictatorial systems invite their
downfall when they open up to the democratic process. The same
thing happened to the right-wing regime of Augusto Pinochet in
Chile.

    Washington might do well just to accept the boon as another
in a happy series of democratic surprises and get on with the
business of making Chamorro's remarkable victory stick. She is
inexperienced and untested, head of a patchwork coalition of 14
parties that stretch across the ideological spectrum and share
little except their opposition to the Sandinistas. In addition
to reviving the economy, Chamorro faces extraordinary
challenges: how to disband the contra forces safely, how to gain
control of the military and security apparatus from the
Sandinistas, how to soothe the bitter divisions of the past ten
years. Her fragility places a greater burden on the U.S. to
ensure that her election proves more than a momentary triumph.

    The greatest danger -- to Chamorro and to the U.S. -- comes
from the Sandinista People's Army and the internal police.
Hard-liners in the F.S.L.N. are balking at turning over control
of the security forces to Chamorro, and many fear vengeance from
the contras who still roam the countryside. The Sandinistas want
the rebels to disband first. The contras in turn have expressed
reluctance to put down their weapons until after Chamorro takes
power on April 25.

    President Bush made it clear that the war is over as far as
the U.S. is concerned. "There is no reason at all for further
military actions from any quarter," he said. But if power in
Nicaragua is to change hands peacefully, the military standoff
must be resolved before inauguration day. A violent
confrontation would present Bush with an appalling decision on
how far to go to support the candidate the U.S. helped elect.
Washington might serve its own interests better by persuading
the contras to demobilize immediately, as both Chamorro and the
Sandinistas have asked, but only after the Sandinistas offer
firm guarantees that they will not pounce once the opposition
is disarmed.

    The U.S. must also recognize that the Sandinistas are not
going to fade away. They remain the largest and best-organized
political party in the country, and some still see them as
social reformers. Bush's habitual low-key reaction to stunning
change was welcome last week, in contrast to years of shrill
U.S. rhetoric. Administration officials were publicly gracious
to outgoing President Daniel Ortega Saavedra, careful to praise
his commitment to fair elections and his apparent reasonableness
-- so far -- in defeat.

    Washington seems prepared to accept the Sandinistas in the
role of loyal opposition. "There is space in a democratic
Nicaragua for the expression of all political points of view,"
said White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater. Robert Pastor,
Jimmy Carter's chief Latin American adviser, suggests that Bush
go further, for example by inviting Sandinista ministers to
Washington along with the new government to work out the terms
of U.S. aid. "The Sandinistas should be given as many
incentives as possible for cooperation," he says.

     The fundamental challenge to Chamorro, and the most urgent
claim on the U.S., remains Nicaragua's economy. "The country
needs to be completely rehabilitated," says Sol Linowitz, former
U.S. Ambassador to the Organization of American States and
co-negotiator of the 1977 Panama Canal treaty. According to a
1986 World Bank study, the Nicaraguan economy will need $1.3
billion a year for the next ten years just  to keep ahead of the
country's growing population. The U.N.O. has called for at least
$2 billion in U.S. aid -- $200 million immediately and $600
million annually for the next three years. Oklahoma Democratic
Congressman Dave McCurdy labels that request "outrageous."

    The Bush Administration, caught off guard along with
everyone else, has not yet unveiled a coherent plan to help
Chamorro consolidate her victory. Bush has promised to let the
five-year trade embargo lapse when Chamorro takes office, and he
will no doubt agree to restoring Nicaragua's credit at the
international lending institutions. He will resume full
diplomatic relations. But his aides have been quick to dismiss
the notion of a cash windfall. "It will not be anywhere near
what some of the Nicaraguans are asking," said an
Administration official. The U.S. is strapped for money for its
own domestic needs and swamped by requests from other emerging
democracies. Bush appears likely to limit himself to general
promises, saying he wants time to study the problem before he
commits to any dollar amount. He will try to persuade Japan and
Western Europe to contribute funds, but they too are
oversubscribed by the needs in Eastern Europe. Bush may even
quietly encourage the Soviet Union to continue its nonmilitary
cash subsidies, plus 25,000 tons of free grain and 70% of the
oil Nicaragua consumes.

    Nicaraguans are bound to resent niggardliness from the U.S.
They feel that their proximity and the long years of damaging
American involvement entitle them to go to the top of the aid
list. The U.S. in recent years has had a bad habit of spending
millions on wars but little on peace; yet the few millions
Washington contributed to this election proved a far better
investment than the hundreds of millions sent to the contras.
U.S. help to the opposition during the election has raised high
expectations that its victory will automatically bring a huge
infusion of aid.

    The Sandinistas' defeat and the capture of Panamanian
dictator Manuel Antonio Noriega have removed two of the most
divisive and destabilizing factors in U.S. relations with Latin
America. With El Salvador's leftist guerrillas likely to be
undercut by a halt in support from Nicaragua and Cuba isolated
as never before, the U.S. has an opportunity to move beyond its
30-year struggle with Marxism in the region. It can stop using
Nicaragua as an ideological battleground and start treating it
like a needy neighbor. But to turn this electoral triumph into
something substantial and lasting, Washington will have to do
something it has not done for a while: think big and act fast.



____________________________________________________________
HOW THE SANDINISTA DEFEAT AFFECTS NICARAGUA'S NEIGHBORS


    GUATEMALA

    With events in Nicaragua a less immediate concern, U.S.
officials have more time to work toward an improvement in
Guatemala's deteriorating human-rights performance.

    EL SALVADOR

    The leftist Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front will
find it harder to get weapons, some of which have been coming
through Nicaragua.

    CUBA

    Castro's isolation increases after the loss of his last
regional ally. And what would happen if Cubans could hold a
referendum on their socialist experiment?

    HONDURAS

    The country reaped $1 billion in U.S. aid while hosting the
contras, but now, stuck with 12,000 unemployed guerrillas, it
wants them to leave without delay.

    COSTA RICA

    It should benefit from increased trade if Chamorro spurs an
economic recovery. With contra border crossings halted, it also
enjoys peace on its northern frontier.

    PANAMA

    Nicaragua's needs may deprive the Endara government of the
full $1 billion it seeks from Washington to rebuild after the
December invasion.


____________________________________________________________
WHAT THE U.S. HAS SPENT ON NICARAGUA

Washington's mood swings can be charted by the shifts in aid to
the Sandinistas and the contra rebels:

    1979

    After the Sandanista revolution, the Carter Administration
supplies $61 million in aid.

    1980

    Violeta Chamorro quits the ruling junta. Congress approves
an additional $75 million in aid.

    1981

    The Reagan Administration suspends aid. Congress authorizes


    1982

    The Sandanistas suspend press freedom and other civil
rights. Congress again approves $19 million for the contras; the
CIA sends an additional $10 million.

    1983

    The contras launch their first major offensive. Regan calls
them "freedom fighters." Congress openly budgets $24 million in
contra aid.

    1984

    The CIA is caught mining Nicaraguan harbors. Daniel Ortega
is elected President. The Boland amendment prohibits further
U.S. aid.

    1985

    Four days after Congress kills contra funding, Ortega flies
to Moscow. The U.S. embargoes trade with Nicaragua. Congress
later approves $27 million in nonmilitary aid for the rebels.

    1986

    Congress votes $100 million in aid. In November, Attorney
General Edwin Meese discloses the diversion of Iran arms-sales
profits to the contras.

    1987

    Oliver North and others admit $14 million in private
funding was solicited for the contras. Costa Rican President
Oscar Arias proposes a regional peace plan. Congress authorizes
$10 million in nonmilitary aid.

    1988

    Congress continues $43 million in "humanitarian" aid. The
Sandanistas and contras reach a cease-fire.

    1989

    The Sandanistas agree to hold early elections if the
contras disband. Congress approves $50 million in nonmilitary
aid to the rebels.


____________________________________________________________
U.S. FOREIGN AID

[Having spent trillions on communist containment, the U.S. is
now being asked to spend a few billion to consolidate new
democracies in Eastern Europe and Central America. Secretary of
State James Baker said last week he wants to increase economic
aid but not "at the expense of a tax increase on the American
people." That leaves two choices: take funds from other areas
of the federal budget, perhaps the Pentagon, or redistribute the
money Washington already hands out.]

    ISRAEL: $3 billion (60% military)

    EGYPT: $2.26 billion (57% military)

    POLAND-HUNGARY: $657 million ($0 military)

    PAKISTAN: $588 million (39% military)

    TURKEY: $516 million (97% military)

    PHILIPPINES: $511 million (28% military)

    PANAMA: $500 million (requested - $0 military)