NICARAGUA - STATEMENT

In defense of Nicaragua, against the USA and its coup agents

Workers Socialist League – USA
Frente Comunista dos Trabalhadores – Brazil
Socialist Fight – Britain
Tendência Militante Bolchevique – Argentina
Communist Revolutionary Action – Greece

A new focus of tension emerges from the current cold war, a new operation “regime change” is underway, the US now support a campaign to overthrow the Nicaraguan government. Since April 18, armed right-wing paramilitary groups have carried out a wave of violent attacks against public institutions, leftist demonstrators and police, to create chaos and promote civil war in the country. 10 people were killed and more than 80 were injured, including at least 30 policemen. Most of the deaths resulted from the lethal use of firearms by right-wing provocateurs.

The strategy is similar to that which was successfully used in Libya, Ivory Coast and Ukraine, and unsuccessfully carried out in Thailand, Syria and Venezuela. In the case of Nicaragua, following the triumph of Daniel Ortega in 2007, the US Embassy in that country launched an intensive support program for the right-wing opposition, the Nicaraguan Liberal Alliance (ALN). ”

The geopolitical cause for this escalating coup against Nicaragua lies in the attempt to completely halt the risk of the execution of the Chinese project of building a large inter-oceanic canal, much larger than the US-controlled Panama Canal. If it were to be executed, such a project, which is temporarily suspended, would enable China to make a leap in world trade. The US is in an open trade war against China. The United States will try everything to prevent the construction of this Canal by its archivists, so they must carry out the regime change operation in Nicaragua, trying to overthrow the Sandinista government, using any pretext.

The right-wing rebellion began after the announcement of the Sandinista government to suspend negotiations with Nicaragua’s private sector business organization, the “Higher Council for Private Enterprise” (COSEP). The FSLN government sought to establish an agreement with COSEP for social security reform. As there was no agreement, the Sandinistas announced unilaterally the reforms in the Nicaraguan Institute of Social Security (INSS).

The issue of retirement reform, the INSS
Depending on the correlation of forces, the great imperialist capital and its Nicaraguan agents may be able to impose a coup d’état, dismiss the FSLN or, if not so much, reach an agreement with the Sandinistas by bargaining for better conditions of appropriation of the social security system at the expense of the right the retirement of the working population.

The social security system has a deficit of about $ 75 million per year. The Sandinista government and the businessmen have different positions on how to balance the deficit.

In Nicaragua, large capital does not allow the Sandinista government to maintain the minimum age of 60 years and the contribution time in 750 weeks. They accuse the INSS of being ready to go bankrupt and to make investments with no commercial return. Before the rebellion, the Sandinistas had already ceded announced the 5% discount of pensions. This policy of conceiving of big capital against the law of the masses demoralizes the left nationalist government, confuses the workers and favors the right, as we saw with the PT in Brazil.

According to Telesur [1], the Sandinista reform advocates a gradual increase in the contribution of employers by 3.25% and by workers by 0.75%; the increase of the government’s own contribution to public sector workers by 1.25%; Revise the salary ceiling so that people who earn high salaries pay the social security contributions proportional to their income; Deduct 5% of retiree’s pensions so that they receive the same health benefits as active workers (which they currently do not receive); Maintenance of the number of weekly contributions to qualify for a full pension in 750 contributions (just over 15 years of contribution); Maintenance of reduced pension and minimum pension; Maintenance of Christmas bonus; Maintain the value of pensions against the annual devaluation of 5%; Maintain all INSS clinics in the public system.

After the violent protests, the government is inclined to yield to blackmail and calls on COSEP to return to the table for further negotiations.

In turn, in this struggle, the bosses want to: Increase the retirement age from 60 to 65 years; Elimination of the reduced pension paid to pensioners who were unable to complete the 750 weekly contributions required to receive a full pension; Eliminate the minimum pension guaranteeing that no one has a pension lower than the minimum wage for industrial workers; No longer maintain the value of the pension against the national currency to offset the five percent annual devaluation applied by the Central Bank; Double the number of weekly contributions for a pension from 750 to 1500; Privatizing INSS medical clinics.

It is necessary to completely defeat the coup imperialist objectives, to make a United Front (AIUF) with the FSLN, trade unions and popular and student organizations, to expand mass self-defense committees and to demand from the government the popular weapons to crush the new “Contras”. It is necessary to go beyond the historical and dangerous limits of Sandinismo, gather forces and political organization of the masses to demand that the 5% more in the social security contribution be paid by the bosses. It is necessary to be suspicious of any employer agreement between the government and the right-wing opposition at the expense of workers’ rights. Therefore, we must oppose the privatization of retirement, the increase of the minimum age and the time of contribution, striving to nationalize the entire financial and health system, under the control of the workers, to ensure the maintenance of the state-controlled social security system users, active and retired workers.

Workers must overcome Sandinismo to carry out the socialist revolution
The right has several fractions, from the most political to the most fascist and bellicose. COSEP businessmen and the right wing of the Catholic Church are stirring up the protests and there are sectors such as the Citizens for Freedom and a right-wing break from Sandinismo, the Sandinista Renovation Movement (MRS), which orchestrate the attacks. The support of some particular groups of the sectarian left to these gangs proves the reactionary nature of the protests. In recent years, a political organization that claims itself internationally as a Trotskyist has supported and embellished all the regime change and coup campaigns of imperialism, the LIT (IWL-FI), led by the Brazilian PSTU. So LIT’s support, followed by the Partido de los Trabajadores de Costa Rica and the PST-Honduras to the protests in Nicaragua, as well as supporting all of the recent offensives of imperialism, in Libya, Syria, Ukraine, Egypt, Brazil is further evidence that these protests are part of a reactionary movement of agents of imperialism, as LIT itself increasingly resembles. Recent history urges us to believe that if the LIT supports it, it is a reactionary coup d’etat of imperialism. When you have doubts as to what position to take in any situation, see … If the LIT is in favor, we are against. If it is against, we are in favor.

Since the first half of the twentieth century, the US has been funding armed right-wing groups that have committed the worst atrocities in Nicaragua against the country’s working people. The best-known US-funded death squads were the revolutionary “Contras” who started a right-wing guerrilla after the Sandinista National Liberation Front overthrew the National Guard government of dictator Anastasio Somoza in 1979. Throughout the 1980s, Cons “imposed chaos and destabilized the Sandinista government until in 1990 the FSLN lost the elections to the right, coming to regain the government by voting in 2006 with Daniel Ortega. Now again, the Sandinistas are threatened by violent counterrevolution. The right wing began to exasperate after the election of Daniel Ortega in 2006 and re-election in 2011 and 2016. But Sandinismo’s greatest weakness lies in the very bourgeois, reformist character of the FSLN. And this is so because the Sandinistas oppose the realization of a complete social revolution in the country, oppose the expropriation of the means of production of the whole of the big bourgeoisie and imperialism, oppose the armament of all the working people and the complete disarmament of fascist right wing.

The weakness of Sandinismo is underlined by the recent announcement by the government that the resolution of the reform is repealed. On April 22nd, after five days of violent protests, the government seems to have yielded in the face of the right-wing pressure and blackmail, calling on COSEP to return to the table for further negotiations with the Catholic Church as the guarantor of peace. Even if the government totally gives in to the demands of imperialism and the Right in an effort to appease them, the recent record of imperialism in regime change operations –Ukraine, Syria etc– suggests that this effort is highly likely to be futile.

In the same week of this reactionary offensive in Nicaragua, the United States ordered and the governments of Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Peru and Paraguay obeyed, by the withdrawal of these countries from Unasur, the Union of South American Nations, in 2008 by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez to counter US dominance in the region.

Any victory of the imperialist gangs in Nicaragua will strengthen the right-wing reaction around the world, will favor the blockade of Cuba, the right-wing coup in Venezuela, to the bombing of Syria. That is why we defend the FSLN from the attacks of the imperialist-sponsored “Contras” without politically supporting Sandinismo and calling on the working class to go beyond the strategy of class collaboration and to fight for their rights. The defeat of the right in Nicaragua will weaken imperialism, and fiscal adjustment policies, such as the social security reform, represent a victory for the workers that will advance the struggle for socialism.
Notes

Note

[1] Nicaragua: Next in Line for Regime Change? The pattern is similar to events in Libya, Syria and Venezuela, where extreme right-wing political minorities conspired with foreign elites to overthrow the national status quo.