Dora Tellez is the one who speaks honestly, and to describe the SRM as center-right is a vulgar absurdity.

I knew Ortega was a corrupt hack when he and his wife of the time went to NYC in the early 80s for a luxury shopping trip. Ortega has become an embarrassment to, and denigration of, the Sandinista revolution.

Ortega and PLC are very much like the Democrats and republicans in the US. The only way they can stay in power is by controling the media and restricting access to the ballot by oposition parties. Ortega should give the junta in Burma a call, I’m sure he can pick up tips on being an autocrat!

if you talk to people in the barrios and communities even Liberal Party supporters acknowledge the improvements in health and education, the efforts the government has made to hold down transport costs, the subsidised food for people on low incomes, the cheap credit for agricultural producers and small businesses, the recovery of the country’s electrical system so now there are no longer 12 hour power cuts week in week out like there were under the previous government, the etensive infrastructure improvements out in the departments, the extremely successful export strategy combined with inward investment in light industrial and agricultural production

even the IMF is happy that the government’s economic programme is sound

my article does not just repeat what the FSLN news channel reported as Warren suggests, but people outside Nicaragua cannot know that, which is why Warren refers to such sources -people outside Nicaragua cannot check them

the nitty gritty is whether the FSLN do well in November’s municipal elections in which MRS ally Eduardo Montealegre and right wing anti-Sandinista are running as candidates for mayor and vice-mayor of Managua respectively

I was one of the few people prior to the 2006 election who correctly predicted that Daniel Ortega would win – currently I think the FSLN will hold at least 75 of the 83 municipalities they hold at the moment and may possibly win over 90 – that’s apart from the municipalities their Convergencia allies might win

the fact that their support is holding up so well is a damning indictment of the opposition parties who have a majority in the national assembly and should be making significant gains at this stage of the government’s programme whose benefits are only just beginning to make real headway against rampant inflation caused by de facto devaluation of the US dollar

people like warren argued that Daniel Ortega would not get elected in 2006 – they were wrong then and they are wrong now

my commitment is to promote education and healthcare in rural communities and urban barrios in various places in northern Nicaragua

my partner knew most of the MRS leadership personally at the time of the insurrection against Anastasio Somoza during which time she received an award for exceptional valour from the FSLN

I first started writing about the MRS in Nicaragua after I discovered that the MRS were systematically deceiving people outside Nicaragua with deliberately misleading propaganda that distorts the facts and is part of the overall destabilization campaign run by the United States to attack progressive political movements in Latin America and more especillay the member countries of the Alternativa Bolivariana of the Americas – something the MRS continue to do

the comments on my article were not surprising since the MRS manage an Israeli-lobby-style propaganda strategy – behind-the-scenes whispering campaigns and nasty personal attacks –  seeking to discredit and silence critics they decide to target

they also have very influential friends in North American and international progressive circles, as the recent well-publicised letter from Eduardo Galeano, Noam  Chomsky and Mario Benedetti indicates

the protest march referred to in the article was organized in close
coordination with the Movimiento pro Nicaragua run by MRS supporter Carlos Tunnerman Bernheim

the MpN web site – http://www.mpn.org.ni/donantes.php – listed as its donors on its site (or it did  last week) all the usual US intervention outfits, National Endowment for Democracy, International Republican Institute, National Democratic Institute, USAID, Open Society Institute

as other writers have noted, the t-shirts, baseball-caps, banners and buses bringing participants from other parts of Nicaragua, the stage, the public address system all constitute a very significant cost, running into several tens of thousands of dollars

apart from the MpN, virtually all the NGOs participating in MRS aligned anti-government activities like the June 27th march, receive funding either from the US government, via USAID for example, or from US government related organizations, as do Hagamos Democracia and Etica y Transparencia for example, it is reasonable to state that the march was heavily funded by the
US government and related organizations – anyone arguing otherwise can only be taken seriously if they explain how this large public event, (march organizers estimated 15,000 people from all over the country) was paid for

as anyone can see from her reply, Belli asserts things without backing them up and completely fails to argue against the points I make in my article – which are themselves supported by a series of articles in both English and Spanish discussing Nicaraguan politics using arguments backed up with facts and reports from Nicaraguan news media

the MRS has repeatedly struck deals with what Belli knows very well are among the most reactionary elements of the Nicaraguan right wing, for example Eduardo Montealegre and his political associates, they have heavily  criticised Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez both in the Nicaraguan National Assembly and in print – Sergio Ramirez regularly publishes articles in Latin American and Spanish media peddling anti-Chavez insults

the MRS have met and negotiated repeatedly with the most reactionary representatives of US imperialism, most notably Jeanne Kirkpatrick prior to her death, as well as maintaining frequent friendly exchanges with the US ambassador Paul Trivelli

it is beyond absurd to pretend that the MRS is not a centre right party, with leading representatives like Sergio Ramirez, Carlos Tunnerman Bernheim and Edmundo Jarquin who all support policies associated with corporate globalization. Even Monica Baltodano (the only MRS leader who could legitimately be described as left wing, whose opportunism and hypocrisy I
have noted in various articles in Spanish) has had to acknowledge that the MRS, her party, supports neoliberal economic policies  she said at a conference last year in Rio de Janeiro “En realidad, en el conjunto de esta alianza se hace un marcado énfasis en los cambios políticos institucionales más que en la modificación del modelo…….. En definitiva en las pasadas elecciones la izquierda electoralmente hablando  de nuevo apareció representada por Daniel Ortega.”

which says outright what neutral commentators like, for example, some of the writers at Radio La Primerisima have been saying for some time

on the cancellation of the MRS legal status as a political party, Belli relies entirely on her false opinion that the Supreme Electoral Council deliberately set out to target and victimise the MRS – but the version of the CSE has been stated on several occasions by its President, Roberto Rivas  and his deputy Emett Lang – the MRS had over a year to get their departmental and municipal
officials duly inscribed and just didn’t do it

Belli contradicts this, but it is a matter of fact and the CSE have made available for public scrutiny the documentation on which they based their decision – so far no one has produced a shred of evidence – absolutely none – to contradict the facts of the CSE’s version – even the foreign development cooperation donors did not say in their much publicised pronouncement on the matter that the decision was not in accordance with Nicaragua’s electoral law – they said they questioned it because the electoral law left a margin of discretion to CSE officials that they regarded as undesirable

despite these facts, Belli and her associates vociferously insult anyone who disagrees with them and simultaneously call Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo intolerant and repressive

they try to depict as a dictatorship the domination of Nicaraguan politics by two democratically elected parties who received 65% of the vote in the 2006 elections while the MRS and its allies together got just over 7%

the MRS are participating in a US government promoted destabilization campaign against a progressive Nicaraguan government respected and supported by the governments of Cuba and Venezuela which enjoys wide support among both the
Nicaraguan population and important economic sectors, for steady improvements in health care, education, infrastructure, agricultural policy and investment seen in Nicaragua over the last two years

Recently, Rosario Murillo, Ortega’s wife who acts as a de facto co-president, distributed an article by Solo, that accused people of impeccable left wing credentials such as Noam Chomsky, Tom Hayden, Eduardo Galeano, Mario Benedetti, Ariel Dorfman, among others as “peons of Negroponte”, because they expressed their support for revolutionary hero, Dora Maria Tellez who was on a 12 day hunger strike to protest the illegal proceedings that were used by the Nicaraguan Electoral Council to outlaw the MRS, the party that has among its members some of the most highly regarded figures of the Sandinista Revolution. The party has become a thorn in Ortega´s back because it has questioned his Machiavellian manipulations, and his alliance with right wing and corrupt former Nicaraguan president, Arnoldo Aleman.
Murillo used the government’s letterhead and personally signed a letter that went along with Solo’s piece. Ortega’s wife is not only the government’s spokesperson, head of communications, head of the so called “People’s Power Councils”, head of the cabinet for social affairs among other responsibilities, but she is also the architect of slander campaigns aired by the official media, that seeks to discredit anybody who dares disagree with her and her husband’s messianic dictates for Nicaragua. Nowadays, anybody who disagrees with Ortega and Murillo’s pretense that their government is the reincarnation of the Sandinista Revolution, becomes by default a neo-liberal who is either paid by or serving the United States. Ortega and his wife are particularly interested in discrediting the criticism from the Nicaraguan left. According to them, the truth is one and it is theirs. They define what is or not revolutionary, who is or not an enemy, neo-liberal, capitalist. Their inflamed rhetoric is used to sustain an illusion that no longer agrees with the reality of the current FSLN. They have marginalized and satanized revolutionary icons such as Tellez and most recently singer, song writer, Carlos Mejia Godoy, whose music they continue to use in spite of his will, arguing that it now “belongs to the people”. They , of course, also define who “the people” is. Those who do not agree with their peculiar ways, are just non-entities who deserve to be labeled traitors, deserters, right wing supporters or facilitators of the imperial will of the US.
The argument used to outlaw the MRS, after it had submitted all the requisites to participate in the municipal elections and its list of candidates had been published by the Electoral Council in the newspaper, couldn’t be more absurd. According to these magistrates elected by Ortega and its ally, the former Somocista Liberal Party, the MRS had not complied with one of its own statutory regulations when restructuring functions within the party. Besides a blatant lie, it was a total smoke screen to hide the fact that Ortega’s increasing unpopularity would have turn many Sandinistas into MRS supporters, especially in Managua.
It was the outrageous nature of the argument that led the donor community to issue a strong statement warning about the consequences of using such minutiae to limit legitimate parties from exercising their political rights.
The pact Ortega has brokered with the right-wing Partido Liberal, has allowed his government to manipulate the Constitution and the judicial system in such a way that his government is beginning to look very much like an institutional dictatorship. Citizens have no recourse whatsoever. Political participation is limited to his allies and those willing to tow his party’s line. The country is in disarray faced with an economical and social crisis that Ortega’s government has no answer for and seems not to have a clue how to handle.
Yet, what is nothing but a caricature and phony imitation of the true Sandinista Revolution, is being presented by Toni Solo in many alternative and left wing publications as a rebirth of revolutionary Nicaragua.
Who is this mysterious and prolific Toni Solo anyway? Seems like a solitary person indeed. Where is he from? Why should he be a credible source? It would be interesting to find out.