FSLN: front or party? WHILE the revolutionary tradition of the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FLN) remains a living force, it is being strongly questioned by some of its leaders, those who initiated the austerity policy implemented by the Sandinistas from 1988. This policy was based on the search for a consensus with the bourgeoisie, to the detriment of the interests of the popular sectors. These leaders are developing a moderate reformist approach which does not take into account the poverty of Nicaraguans, who are subject to a capitalism which, for its part, has not moderated at all; some even advocate co-government with the National Union of the Opposition (UNO), or, in any case, with its most moderate sectors. Those militants who defend the revolutionary traditions of the Front base themselves on an important social mobilization which they are leading. But it seems that they do not have the same coherence and offensive spirit as the advocates of the moderate line. ERIC TOUSSAINT
HE main exponents of the moderate line are former Sandinista minister Alejandro Martinez Cuenca, Edmundo Jarquin (vice-president of the Sandinista parliamentary group, Rafael Solis (former secretary of the National Assembly), Herty Lewites (former Minister of Tourism), supported by two former members of the Sandinista national leadership, Sergio Ramirez (Sandinista vice-president of the Republic and currently president of the parliamentary, group, close to Humberto Ortega) and comandante Victor Tirado.
They are developing a policy in contradiction as much with the historic programme of the FLN in 1969, which they now consider obsolete, as with the El Crucero declaration adopted by the Sandinista assembly after the electoral defeat in June 1990.
Over a period of some months, their positions have been disavowed neither by the leadership of the Front as a whole nor by any of its members. This situation is worrying and has led to repeated criticisms by very many militants who deplore the absence of clear positions on the part of their leadership.
The radical declaration made by Daniel Ortega on April 10, 1991 (which we will reproduce in a future edition of International Viewpoint) seems to indicate a left inflection.
But does it mark a real turning point? Or does it seek to put the government under pressure, and to head off the discontent of the base and a number of cadres in the run-up to the FSLN's July congress?
The public, critical and polemical character of the debate which is developing inside the FLN as its first congress approaches bears witness to the vitality of a party which has led an authentic popular revolution, which has exercised power in conditions of great adversity, and which has been tested by the electoral defeat of
NICARAGUA
«These two positions have been endorsed by the national leadership although, in fact, they represent very different optics which, in practice, should lead to distinct organizational forms.
"According to the Marxist-Leninist conception, the community of ideological views inside the party is a condition sine qua non, which gives the possibility of structuring a determined programme which, historically, leads to the taking of power by the workers... The other position, on the contrary, corresponds more to a front or electoral party structure; all can recognize themselves in the flag of Sandinism and both the landowners and the wage earners will expect the party to represent their antagonistic interests"1
Belli leans visibly towards the "revolutionary party" model, one tal capable of forming a front, notably in an election period.
Moreover, she indicates the undesirable effects of the party/front confusion; "Party discipline is an illusion, precisely to the extent that there exists no ideological community, since the conscious base of discipline is not understood in the same manner by all. ... The appeal for discipline ... becomes a lever of power, a a mechanism of repression in which the line of the party becomes a dog-: ma respected out of fear and not by conviction. Instead of being enriched, the line becomes a straitjacket of force"
"Deideologization" of education
Gioconda Belli also exposes the consequences of this in the area of political education; "this problem of the double structure - front and vanguard party — expressed itself already at the beginning of the 1980s when... education was "de-ideologized", becoming the mechanical and pour study of the immediate situation, which led to an empirical practice..."
She shows the contradiction in the fact that the FSLN, starting from 1984, adopted an essentially electoral programme, addressing itself to all the sectors of voting age, without renouncing its socialist orientation, according to which the workers should be hegemonic.
She concludes by an appeal to the militants: "Without denying what could be valid and retrievable, it is necessary to also see the negative effects and advance towards a synthesis, for today the schizophrenia between party and front, does not allow the FLN to be either a party with a social project in the service of the workers, or a broad front which, while conserving a project of profound social transformations, could appeal to the votes 20 of vast sectors of the population."
Taking up the same theme as Gioconda International Viewpoint #206 • May 13, 1991
Belli, Rosario Murillo, directress of the cultural supplement of Barricada, poet and former companion of Daniel Ortega, has mounted a constant attack on the state of the FSLN: "Inside the Front, you can find Sandinistas as well as nonSandinistas. Millionaires and the poor? Followers of God and followers of the devil ... Yes, gentlemen, the Sandinista Front is currently a front, and as a front, where it is possible to find everybody, it is, at the moment, a pile of shit"
Murillo underlines the necessity of the revolutionary project and practice; "To be revolutionary, red, communist, a comrade, to aspire to the revolution in the Third (and the whole) World is a question of soul, of life and of heart"
Attack on FSLN moderates
She then attacks the moderate wing of the Front, which uses the crisis of the so-called socialist camp as a pretext for indefinitely postponing the revolutionary perspective: "There are those who consider that the revolution] is cheap snobbery. There are the "moderns" , who have passed now onto anti-radical chic. Via the centre, they say. To arrive more rapidly..... But do we know where?
"The world has changed, it is true. The Soviets repudiate their own lies or truths, they no longer wish to be called either soviets, or socialists, or reds. But the revolution is not the extension throughout the world of the Soviet model, and this, Nicaragua has well understood.... Communism has fallen in the countries of the East? Very well! But has Nicaragua ever been in the east? Has Communism ever reigned there?"
Murillo then indicates with more precision who she is denouncing, "We have spoken of the Sandinista Front and of its broad spectrum, what some call its ideological diversity. Inside it, the millionaires aspire to make their millions, to help the others, they say (as bosses, to be sure)4. Inside it, there are some politicos... who desire, with the help of old methods (which they now call modern)
to fool the others"
She concludes on the stakes of the congress: "This year we must decide if this front will be a front of Sandinistas or of "confusionists" , of pragmatists or of parasites, of chameleons or of truths, of millionaires or of workers.... Who could maintain this Sandinista Front?
Only those who know the pragmatism of physical survival - or who have made this choice — and human dignity, of the raw and naked truth, which is paradoxically also that of hope and of dreams. Our revolutionary hope at the congress resides in the impoverished majority being fully represented, by itself and by those who assume its defence."
What direction for the FSLN corresponds to the will, expressed above, to see the Sandinistas adopt a clearer profile and class practice?
To answer this question it is necessary to return to the social conflicts which have broken out since the accession of the UNO to the government.
The workers of the towns and of the countryside, organized in the National Front of Workers (FNT) have tried to stem the governmental attacks through several strikes; the movements of May and June 1990 shook the Sandinista leadership and the agreement which put an end to them was negotiated, in part, under the table; the representatives of the workers did not participate at all the discussions.
Trinchera, the weekly of the Sandinista trade unions, strongly criticized this. At
1. All the quotations from G. Belli are from Barricada, February 14, 1991. 2. The draft statues of the FLN to be submitted to the congress for discussion, confim the possibility of being a member of the Front, whatever one's class position. "Article 4: All citizens of Nicaragua, without distinction of religion or economic position, who accept its programmatic platform and statutes, can be members of the FLN. " Barricada Internacional, April 1991. This has been criticized in the press by several militants. 3. Barricada, as translated in the Bulletin Amérique centrale, March 1991, Brussels. 4. Herty Lewites, former Sandinista minister of tourism, is one of these millionaires. In 1988-89, he set in motion a programme of privatizations of a part of the tourist infrastructure. Here is what he said: "When we lost [the elections] I felt shocked. Then I said to myself: I am going to show that I am a Sandinista who could become a millionaire. Because the challenge that now faces us is, without being in government, to make money, and this is a good challenge for the Front's militants. The Front has not defined, at the level of its national leadership, what it is really looking for...What I ask of the Front is: each to their work. If I succeed in achieving personal economic development, I won't feel bad about it." El Semanario, March 7, 1991.
the Sandinista Assembly of El Crucero in June 1990 the national leadership, confronted with the criticisms of militants engaged in the struggles, proposed a radical text renewing the line of "governing from below"
Nonetheless, this text listed neither the nationalized sector, nor the arming of the masses amongst the inviolable revolutionary conquests. The first compromise with the government in June 1990 was soon called into question by new antisocial measures and the July strikes saw a mounting fear of confrontation between the UNO regime and the Sandinista trade unions.
New compromise struck
The FSLN took the side of the strikers while preaching reconciliation. A new compromise was then struck; but some weeks later, the government showed that it was not intending to apply these accords, and privatizations were begun.
In September, in a climate of renewed social tension, the government entered into talks about talks so as to agree a pact; this was signed on October 26, 1990 with the Sandinista and pro-UNO trade unions, and some employers federations but without the main one, the Superior Council of Private Enterprise (COSEP).
These accords, explicitly destined to give confidence to the IMF, the World Bank, certain European governments and above all the United States, sanctioned a major concession on the part of the Sandinistas: "The government, in privatizing the state enterprises, takes into account the rights gained by the workers, such as their right to participate in the ownership of the enterprises; [it] will authorize the functioning of private financial institutions... [it] will concede export licenses to associations of producers and to private individuals"5
Three important gains of the revolution were thus put in question; the existence of the Area of People's Property (the nationalized sector); the nationalization of the financial and credit system, and the state monopoly of foreign trade.
These concessions by the Sandinistas have been the object of strong criticisms on the part of a lett sector ol the Front: "Even if the FNT has signed the 'accords of concertation, it is obvious that the workers at the base of the popular sectors are not in agreement with the privatizations...
"This gesture of conciliation [by the Front] implies a concession on principles and on the fundamental conceptions of the revolution... Obviously, the collapse of the socio-economic model of the coun tries of the East constitutes for some [Sandinistas] a handicap to claiming the progressive character of social, collective ownership of the means of production -and for others, a magnificent occasion to rid themselves of a concept with which
NICARAGUA The Calvary of the Nicaraguan people
THE right had promised during the electoral campaign that once
In power it would in 100 days be able to significantly reduce the rate of inflation, reduce unemployment and relaunch the economy. It has used the classical methods of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), aggravating the austerity measures applied by the Sandinistas from 1988
In 1990, public expenditure was sharply reduced, as well as credit for businesses - the government tried thus to reduce the amount of money in circulation in order to reduce inflation. The consequences were disastrous: a deepening of the recession; an increasing number of bankruptcies of firms; redundancy for tens of thousand of workers in the public and private sector (30,000 according to the trade unions); and a sharp decline in the quality of the health and education systems. For the sixth consecutive year, the Gross Domestic Product has fallen; inflation, far from being conquered, reached around 14,000% In 1990 (against
1,600% in 1989), despite the recession.
The introduction of a new currency, the cordoba-oro, introduced progressively into circulation for certain operations, was the snock weapon against inflation; the old cordoba (identified with Sandinism) was allowed to devalue itself to the extreme to be then replaced by the cordoba-oro (identified with the new regime), which, because it would have the confidence of the public, would allow hyperinflation to be arrested - the cordoba-oro would be exchanged in parity with the US dollar. This operation has met complete defeal. Some months after being put into circulation, the new currency exchanged on the black market at a rate of 5-1 against the US dollar.
Moreover, the government reduced import duties; the national market was thus flooded by the products of the neighboring coun tries and the crisis of the productive sector supplying the interior market deepened - the importation of consumer goods grew by 74% in 1990 whereas that of goods of production fell by 25% -without improving the purchasing power of the immense majority of the population. On the contrary, Nicaragua has become the most expensive country in Latin America (Envio, February 1991).
10 measure the depth of the recession, it is sufficient to cite some figures; in 1990, industrial production fell by 8.4%, construction by 36%, and agriculture for the internal market has nosedived a decline of 40% for corn, 74 and 30% for the two varieties of rice, and 12% for beans). The minister responsible for the 100 day plan,
Francisco Mayorga, resigned in autumn 1990. The failure of his plan (like the austerity plan of 1988) stemmed particularly from an error of analysis; hyperinflation is not primarily caused by an excess of liquidity or solvent demand (contrary to the dogmas of the Mir, according to which the people dispose of an excessive purchasing power in relation to the quantity of available goods) -between May and December 1990, the real mass of means of payment in circulation fell by 60%, but this formidable contraction of demand has not stopped inflation reaching 5,900% during the same period, according to an article by Pedro A. Rodriguez which appeared in El Nuevo Diario. The succession of devaluations and the sluggish rhythm of inflation impelled traders and producers to integrate the expected devaluations in their sales prices; that is, they preferred to sell less products at a superior price than to sell more for a lesser reward.
On March 1, 1991, a new shock austerity plan (the third since 1988) was applied with a new maxi-devaluation. The old cordoba, which exchanged at 25,000,000-1 against the US dollar in February 1990, was replaced by the cordoba-oro with parity with the dollar abandoned. Wages are only partially indexed; 420 state enterprises are for sale to the highest bidder, and to foreigners, so as to allow Nicaragua to redeem its foreign debt. Minister Antonio
Lacayo has said "we have no money but we have planes, hotels and buildings to sell.
This last plan, directly designed by the World Bank and the IMF, has once more tailed, inflation reached 285% in March 1991 and the cordoba is still overvalued - exchanging at 12-1 against the
US dollar. Meanwhile the people plunge deeper into misery. * 21
NICARAGUA they had never fully identified.
"But it is not the concept which has been invalidated in these countries, but the form adopted and, in any case, nobody can deny that, in our situation, the APP represents a potential axis for the socioeconomic development of the country"
The authors of the article go on to develop their criticisms of the policy of the Sandinistas in power: "It was perhaps the errors committed in the matter of management and the type of relations supported by the Sandinista government, in the APP enterprises, which limited the development of the consciousness of the workers as social owners of the enterprises; it is perhaps this which facilitated their failure to defend their preservation".
Finally, the consequences of accepting the privatizations for the programme of the FSLN are underlined: "In the last instance, it is necessary to ask what the position of the FSLN is in relation to social property. The response was implicit until now in the idea [that it was necessary] to preserve the APP.
"Now, the facts take another new turn. One could discuss them at the time of the congress, but it would perhaps be too late, above all because of facts: changes have already been made, in the direction of substituting for the demand for...the social ownership of the means of production — of which the embryonic form is the APP —that of private property".
Whatever position the FLN congress adopts, what is sure is that the workers and the FNT (supported by the FSLN) are trying to cut their losses by demanding that certain privatizations are done in their favour?
Besides the fact that, in most cases, they have not won, it is certain that the private ownership by the workers of all or a part of an enterprise will resolve nothing.
If the APP is dismantled and if the recession persists, the workers' collectives will have to manage the enterprises in a totally hostile environment; they must proceed to dismissals, and indeed to the closure of enterprises.
Accords followed by right wing offensive
Although seeking social peace, the signing of the October 1990 accords has been followed by two offensives from the right; the "rebellion of the mayors" in November, and that of the UNO parliamentary group in December®.
The Sandinistas have had to make new concessions concerning the army. This has not stopped the parliamentary Sandinista group from linking up with a part of the UNO parliamentary group to get Alfredo César elected as President of the National Assembly — despite the fact that this latter, a former Contra chief and close to Violeta Chamorro, allied himself, some 22 against the compromise passed between days earlier, with the right wing of UNO International Viewpoint #206 • May 13, 1991 the leadership of the army and the presi dent on the defence budget.
César had only broken this alliance with the extremists on the strong assurance of being elected thanks to the support of the Sandinistas.
To extract a compromise solution, the Sandinistas had to accept a supplementary reduction of the military budget, which was finally adopted by 69 votes (36 FSLN deputies and 33 UNO of the César group) against 21 (from the wing of vice-president Godoy).
Some days later, Césir was elected; the presidency of the Assembly was thus constituted by 4 members of UNO, close to César, and two of the FSLN.
This parliamentary tactic has reinforced, to the great annoyance of the militant Sandinista base, the thesis of cogovernment supported by the moderate wing of the Front.
Rafael Solis, one of its spokespersons, wrote concerning the attitude of the FLN during the rebellion of the mayors: "For the first time, the FSLN has had an intelligent policy and has not directly confronted the rebels, supporting — discreetly — the government; it has contributed to a peaceful solution of the problem, and has built this co-government of which we have spoken before. Co-government is not evil and must not be rejected by the Sandinistas"9
A "constructive" attitude
R. Solis constrasted this "constructive" attitude to that adopted before: "The FSLN, profiting from the errors committed by the government and under pressure... embarked on the July riot [the general strike] which, in my opinion, has had negative repercussions not only for the country but for Sandinism itself
For Solis, it was necessary to convince the workers to continue to make sacrifices by telling them that the Sandinista trade unions, the Association of Field Workers (ATC) and the Sandinista Workers Central (CST) had advanced exaggerated demands.
Sergio Ramirez, head of the Sandinista parliamentary group, is more prudent; "What exists today between the FLN and the government is a global political understanding, and the search for common points on the subjects linked to national stability""10
Ramirez said that the support of the parliamentary Sandinista group to the candidature of Alfredo César was "a subject clearly negotiated between the Front and the government".
Edmundo Jarquin, vice-president of the FSLN parliamentary group, said, some months later, that it was necessary to support, against the opinion of the FNT, the government's March 1991 shock plan (see box).
He added "I believe, moreover, that if we were in government, we would be doing something similar..."'1.
Moderates hope for success of UNO plan
In March 1991, Jarquin and the rest of the moderate wing placed their hopes in the success of the UNO economic plan: "If, by July [1991] the economic situation is better, the debate inside the FLN will be less complicated. We will be less tempted by extreme positions"
It is this current which is pushing the Front to convince the FNT to give the government two months respite (an accord of this kind was signed on March 19, 1991); it hoped that the IMF and the World Bank would at last free up important lines of credit.
Five weeks later, the defeat of the plan!? certainly had much to do with the more radical tone of Daniel Ortega: "The policy of structural adjustments will determine the future of the country. Either we will have the known oligarchic capitalist model, imposing a neo-Somozaism, a neocapitalism, or else this country will continue to advance towards new forms of economic and social development, which preserve the conquests of the revolution... The government is under the influence of the policy of the United States which believes in its right to govern Nicaragua by this method. The forces of the far right sense also that this is their government, that it seeks to eliminate Sandinism without respecting truly democratic rules...
"The counter-revolution is seeking to gain some ground. The armed counterrevolution is no longer the armed one, now it calls out for the government itself to advance in the dismantling of the revolution"'3 .* 5. Nicaragua en concertación, official Nicaraguan govemment publication, Managua, 1990. 6. Nicaragua Desde Adentro, Managua, December 30, 1990. 7. "Our proposal is privatization that will benefit the workers; but other forces are in movement aiming to get their hands on the properties. This will be decisive for the FLN, the revolutionary future and the stability of the country." Daniel Ortega in Barricada, April 11, 1991. 8. See International Viewpoint, no. 203, April 1, 191, and no. 205, April 29, 1991. 9. Barricada, December 26, 1991. 10. Barricada, January 22, 1991. 11. El Semanario, March 7, 1991. 12. Another factor which had an impact was the discovery by the Front of a letter from the World Bank, declaring "the government is on the way to carrying out total privatization", Barricada, April 1, 1991. This document also points our the peculiar nature of the state that Chamorro heads: "there exists a worry...with regard to the nature of the present political difficulties and the fact that the partisans of the previous regime control the legal administrations, including the police, making the imposition of property rights difficult." If these capitalist circles have reason to be worried, they also have consolations, since, as A. Lacayo says: "in Nicaragua, territory equivalent to a tenth of the Salvadoran land area has been retumed to its former owners" La Prensa, February 4, 1991. At the time, what worried Lacayo was that the level of US aid was far lower than "the aid received [before 1990] from the socialist bloc and the Soviet Union in particular." 13. Barricada, April 11, 1991.