The decomposition of the
FSLN leadership
* Nicaragua struggle we undertook in dictatorship, the struggle of the FSLN to make a revolution, was also a struggle for human rights. It has always been very difficult for me to establish the frontier between the revolutionary and the human rights activist, because I have always considered that the struggle for human rights is a revolution.
Participating in the anti-Somoza struggle when I was a student, I was involved with the FSLN well before the insurrectional struggle, until I was imprisoned in 1979. When I was still a prisoner and the revolutionary government was still in Costa Rica, I was made Vice-president of the Supreme Court of Justice. The work of reorganizing a judicial power that would serve the interests of the Nicaraguan people took up all my time during the years of the revolution.
### Rank and file
While it was in power, the Frente Sandinista did not manage to develop itself as a political party. It went from a politicomilitary movement, a guerilla organization that took power through armed struggle, to forming a government administering the country. There was no time to build a political organization, to develop a party, to consolidate democratic styles of leadership and participation. No time, or no will because the top leadership thought it was not necessary? Whatever the case, it was a big error that extremely vertical and not very democratic styles of leadership were developed and justified on the basis of the war that the United States waged against us.
The 1990 electoral defeat showed that the FSLN was not prepared to assume the role of an opposition political party. With the confusion between party and state that existed in the 1980s, a lot of the donations that the FSLN received as a party went automatically to the state. After the defeat, it was judged that the wealth of the Frente was an indispensable basis for keeping the party alive. But soon, what was meant to 22 International Viewpoint #321 May 2000
VILMA Nunez, a prominent member of the Sandinista National Liberation Front
(FS) and President of the
Nicaraguan Center for Human
Rights, spoke to Envio" on her assessment of the current crisis of the organization. Her contribution has been abridged for reasons of space. be the wealth of the party was concentrated in a few hands. Laws 85 and 86belated efforts to mitigate the error of not having made a timely distribution of properties on a legal basis - were also used by some to appropriate property for themselves. The lack of a political organization adequate to the new circumstances, corruption in relation to the redistribution of property, and insecurity and individualism amplified by the electoral defeat were the three axes underlying the decomposition of the leadership of the Frente Sandinista.
Starting from 1990 the historic leaders of the FSLN began to move away from the rank and file, apart from Daniel Ortega. Although he was as much responsible for the authoritarianism and lack of transparency as the others, he appeared "linked" to the popular sectors in their struggles against the new neoliberal economic model. Today we see that in this behavior there was an element of manipulation of these struggles to maintain his status as political leader and to develop his position as caudillo.
### Vertical and autocratic
I was among the last to realize what the vertical and autocratic styles of leadership that today are openly criticized in the FSLN were developed and consolidated from the years of the revolution. On the other hand, in the area where I worked during the revolution - the juridical, legal, institutional area - I realized from the beginning that what was being developed was a government that did not believe in laws, for legal formalities had no value, among other things because it was thought that the revolution would remain for ever, that: a revolutionary government would always be in power. In the Supreme Court of Justice we had to accept many dubious legal changes that were always justified in terms of the "defense" of the revolution.
First congress After 1990, the FSLN began to organize itself as a political party and convened its first congress in 1991. On this occasion, I was invited by the national leadership to join the Electoral Commission of the FSLN. Thus I participated in the approval of the first Statutes and Declaration of Principles and in the election of the first party posts chosen by a Congress. On this occasion also, through no wish of my own, I was proposed and elected by the congress as coordinator of the first Ethics Commission, created precisely to deal with the investigation of allegations that were already piling up against some leaders.
The decomposition of the leadership of the FSLN, its moral debacle, is not something new. It is a process that has been gestating for a long time, and there are many stories that illustrate this sad fact. I had the opportunity to see signs of this decomposition up close when participating in the Ethics Commission. In those years all the investigations turned around the theme of the property of the Frente: what it was, who administered it, what use was made of these goods... If there was some political justification for the transfer to the FSLN of some of the property of the revolutionary state, there was no justification for individual Sandinistas benefiting privately from this collective wealth.
When the Ethics Commission began to fight a battle to have information on the property of the FLN, it faced obstacles on all sides.
We recognized that there was no political will in the National Leadership to give us information on what constituted the wealth of the party. They distrusted us. We recognized that the Ethics Commission
that could be shown to him as leader. It stitutional and electoral reforms derived had been created solely through the pressure of international solidarity and national public opinion.
### Obstacles
In the Commission we were faced with serious denunciations of corruption against Sandinista comrades at all levels, charged with misuse of Frente property. When the Commission asked for information from the National Leadership, we always faced obstacles to getting hold of the information. At first, I saw my participation in the Ethics Commission as a very great stimulus. In practice, this was one of the saddest stages of my party life, since I was unable to work in accordance with the principles and the statutes of the party and the rules of the Commission. Thus, at the second Congress of the FSLN in 1994 I said I did not wish to accept any post in the Commission. On this occasion I was elected a member of the Sandinista Assembly.
Although this was theoretically the highest authority of the party I recognized that this organ of leadership did not function. We only received information on what had already been decided. Sometimes they listened to us and we believed that our opinion would be taken into account. But it was an illusion. This situation was increasingly consolidated, and many times Daniel Ortega would announce something at a demonstration or in the media and then met the Sandinista Assembly to tell it what was already in the public domain. Among many assembly members who hoped for a democratic system and real participation in oring any his syl con disappointment.
At the 1996 elections, I was convinced that with Daniel Ortega as candidate the FSLN would not win. I decided to listen to the advice of many militants, men and women, and launched my candidature in the FSLN's internal consultation, a novel experience that could have been a democratic exercise. I took this decision not in the belief that I would win, but believing it would be an interesting test of the truth of the democratization of which the FSLN leadership had spoken. I was intent on the democratization of the FSLN and not on victory, intent on conquering rights and spaces for women. Daniel Ortega never accepted my candidature as an effort to democratize the FSLN, rather as an unforgivable irreverence, the worst disrespect convinced me it was necessary to launch new struggles to democratize the FSLN.
The second electoral defeat of the FSLN in 1996 brought new proofs that the FSLN did not really believe in the juridical institutions. Daniel Ortega fiercely denounced fraud, but the FSLN did not make use of all the resources that the Electoral Law had at its disposition to contest the fraud. We fought the 1996 elections in a disorganized manner, preoccupied by the crowds and the images of the electoral campaign. I believe that this was one of the reasons the FSLN lost these elections.
### Defeat
This defeat - not expected by the structures of the FSLN, although they were responsible for it — and the analysis made by the leadership of the FSLN of the advantages gained from the protocol of transition made in 1990 with the new government of Violeta Chamorro, led to the current pact. The leadership clique took the easiest road to maintain spaces and shares of power, making a pact with the new government of Arnoldo Alemán, which was of a very different nature to that of doña Violeta. And today we know that already on January 12th, 1997, two days after the coming to power of Alemán, the first private meeting took place between him and Daniel Ortega. More meetings followed. That day the pact that has now been consummated began.
The pact is one of the final acts expressing the political and ethical decomposition of the FSLN leadership. Divorced for some years from the cause of the people, from the base units of Sandinismo, they have renounced the task of opposition and allied with a government which is Somozista in thought and deed, to keep their share of power and accede to more.
The pacto does not consist solely of the legal and institutional transformations agreed between the two leaderships. More important than all this is the hidden pact, all the rules, which guarantee shares of economic power to Ortega and his cronies. The real motivation of the Pact is to guarantee to the FLN leadership, among other things, very valuable properties that are currently in the hands of cooperatives or are part of the Area Propiedad de los Trabajadores. Secondly, the FSLN hopes to return to power on the basis of the con-
Nicaragua * from the pact.
The pact has been carried out against democracy and political pluralism, which was one of the principles of the revolution. It is an outrage against the institutions of democracy. It seeks to organize a state that guarantees the murky interests of the two groups that have made the pact. It will politicize both the judicial and electoral authorities. Most seriously of all, it puts an end to the Contraloría General de la República, the sole governmental institution that had won credibility in this country for its struggle against corruption.
It is hard to accept all these realities, it is sad to assume them, and also it is dangerous to say them. But if in Nicaragua, if everyone does not assume their own responsibilities we are not going to go forwards. The pact has raised the crisis inside the FSLN to an unprecedented level. The leadership circle is in terminal crisis.
### Disquiet
Among FSLN militants there is currently much disquiet, discomfort and uncertainty. But, on the basis of the sad experience of the many valuable comrades who left the Frente to form the MRS in 1994, the groups which today criticize publicly the current direction of the party
Izquierda del FSLN, Iniciativa Sandinista, Sandinistas por la Dignidad, Foro Sandinista and others _ believe unanimously that the struggle to rescue the FSLN, to transform it and make it once again an instrument of popular struggle should take place within the FSLN.
I believe that at times like this the main thing is not to be afraid, for one of the factors that works against the transformation of the FSLN is the fear that has taken possession of the militants. Fear of breaking myths. Fear of being silenced by reprisals. And fear also of losing the material resources that the revolution has given to many. What unites us is the conviction that the FSLN does not belong to the clique of leaders who today have kidnapped it, but rather belongs to all Sandinistas. And not only Sandinistas but also all the people of Nicaragua.
So it is urgent that Sandinismo reacts and elaborates a project adequate for this moment in the history of Nicaragua and the world.*
* Envio, monthly review of the Central American University (UCA), Managua, Nicaragua. This interview was published in the January-February 2000 issue. International Viewpoint #321 May 2000 23