Nicaragua braced for the return of the ugly Americans

For the people of Nicaragua, there must be a sense of deja vu, coupled with a deep feeling of foreboding, as they again come under the harsh spotlight of a Republican American Administration.

More than 20 years after the United States intervened to brutally oust a democratically elected government, it is again being accused of interfering in the Central American nation's domestic politics to ensure the victory of its preferred candidate.

And again, it is acting against the left-wing Sandinista party and its candidate, Daniel Ortega.

US intervention 2006-style does not involve spending US$300 million ($465 million) to support anti-government Contra forces, an intervention that led to a vicious war and the death of up to 30,000 people.

This time, America's involvement involves making clear its preferences by having its ambassador denounce Ortega as "anti-democratic", a "candidate from the past" and a "tiger who hasn't changed his stripes".

There is also the veiled threat that the US may not co-operate with a government headed by the Sandinistas. One senior US official wrote in a Nicaraguan newspaper last year that should Ortega be elected, "Nicaragua would sink like a stone".

Some experts say the Americans' behaviour in Nicaragua continues a pattern in a region where the US has for decades sought to undermine governments it opposes - through peaceful means or otherwise - to secure one it believes it can do business with.

Under the Administration of President George W. Bush, the policy has, if anything, gathered pace.

"US policy in Latin America under the Bush Administration has been uniquely ideologically driven, far more than it was even under the Reagan Administration," said Larry Birns, director of the Council on Hemispheric Affairs, a Washington think tank.

"The latest thing is that US ambassadors in places such as Bolivia, El Salvador and Costa Rica all walk in and say, 'The US has made it clear it supports free and fair elections, but if a non-US-friendly candidate wins we will cut off US aid'. They are quite open about it."

He added: "That is why [Cuban leader] Fidel Castro is so popular in Latin America, because he is defiant. That is why [Venezuela's elected President] Hugo Chavez is so popular in Latin America, because he gives the finger to Washington. He makes obscene gestures literally and metaphorically."

American policy in Nicaragua is being most clearly delivered by its ambassador in Managua, Paul Trivelli, who has spoken of his disapproval of Ortega and his Sandinista party, and indicated his support for Eduardo Montealegre, the candidate for the National Liberal Alliance.

His outspokenness - in contrast to the more considered language usually used by diplomats - has created a stir in Nicaragua.

Ortega, a former president who is heading the polls for November's election, told the Houston Chronicle: "Even in the worst of times during the Reagan Administration, the US envoy was careful with his words. But the current ambassador acts like he is the governor of Nicaragua."

Trivelli was confronted about his comments by Carlos Chamorro, a leading Nicaraguan television journalist and son of former Nicaraguan president Violet Chamorro, the woman who beat the Sandinistas in the 1990 election.

Chamorro said no foreign diplomat had ever acted with such "belligerence" in the nation's domestic affairs.

"Why," Chamorro asked the ambassador, "do you mention the names of the presidential candidates the US thinks well or badly of, making it appear that the US vetoes certain candidates?"

Trivelli replied: "Since [last] October we have been trying to speak in a more direct way so that people understand what our decision is. I think it is important that people have no doubts about what we think."

When Chamorro cited polls showing most Nicaraguans believed Trivelli had overstepped the line, he replied: "I am not going to stop defending democracy. That is part of our policy and it will continue to be part of our policy ... I believe that speaking is not intervening."

But several former US diplomats with experience in Central America have said Trivelli has stepped well beyond usually understood diplomatic boundaries.

Experts also say America's history in Nicaragua and its military intervention give Trivelli's comments a weight beyond the words used.

Professor Karen Kampwirth, a Latin America expert at Knox College in Illinois who sits on an independent panel commissioned by a Nicaragua support group to investigate American interference in Nicaragua, said the US carried much historical baggage.

"It's not like the ambassador from Zimbabwe expressing a preference for a candidate. Zimbabwe does not have the history of interfering in Nicaragua," she said.

"One of the Ortega billboards in Nicaragua was spray-painted 'We don't want another war'. What it was saying was that if you vote for Ortega you are voting for a possible war with the US."

The US intervention in Central and Latin American often involves giving money to favoured parties.

Two years ago, the Independent reported how hundreds of thousands of dollars of American money was being sent to opposition groups seeking a no-confidence vote against Hugo Chavez in Venezuela. Some of it went to people and groups involved in the short-lived 2002 coup against Chavez.

This week, it was revealed that US money is being sent to "pro-democracy" groups seeking to remove Chavez in Venezuela's presidential contest in December.

Much of this money is channelled through the National Endowment for Democracy, which gets US$80 million a year from the US Congress. It dispenses the cash to groups around the world "to strengthen democracy".

Critics say it routinely meddles in other countries' affairs, supporting groups that believe in free enterprise, minimal government intervention in the economy and opposition to socialism.

It gives grants either directly or through four core "grantees".

One of these, the International Republican Institute (IRI) was involved in helping organise opponents of Haiti's former president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the democratically elected leader, who was forced from office in 2004.

Bill Berkowitz of the non-profit group Working for Change wrote: "The NED ... provides money, technical support, supplies, training programmes, media know-how, public relations assistance and state-of-the-art equipment to select political groups, civic organisations, labour unions, dissident movements, student groups, book publishers, newspapers, and other media.

"Its aim is to destabilise progressive movements, particularly those with a socialist or democratic socialist bent."

The study in which Professor Kampwirth participated found the US had spent US$10 million in Nicaragua on financing political education and civil society groups.

Ivania Vega Rueda, a programme officer for the IRI in Nicaragua, told the report's authors that the IRI had been active in helping organise marches against the Sandinistas and another political party, the Constitutional Liberal Party.

The IRI had "created" the Movement for Nicaragua, which she said organised marches against the two parties.

The US embassy in Nicaragua did not return calls seeking comment.

But Thomas Shannon, the US assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs, in an interview with the Houston Chronicle, defended US actions.

"We see ourselves as pushing the democratic process," he said. "It's about creating political systems that are open, transparent and inclusive."

- INDEPENDENT