Nicaragua: Political Scenarios 2010-2011

The return of the FSLN to power awoke, from the very moment of its election in November 2006, important expectations in Nicaraguan society, especially with relation to the improvement of living conditions for ample sectors of society that were not favored with economic polities and development strategies implemented by the three earlier governments. In the same manner, the legitimacy granted by the competitiveness of the electoral process and the acceptance of its results by all relevant actors, as well as the internal cohesion of the new governing party, offered the opportunity of moving forward with the solution of the basic problems of Nicaraguan society, including prevention of a governance crisis such as occurred in 2005.

After three years of government, a good part of the population and of the nation’s leadership, including the opposition, acknowledge as positive the administration and governmental policies implemented in social issues (education, health and infrastructure), as well as the responsible handling of the economy in macroeconomic terms, which have brought stability and assured the continuity of agreements with international financing institutions.

Nevertheless, Nicaragua continues having two important challenges of a political institutional and social/economic order.

On one hand, the problems of political institutional order are still current.  Nicaraguan political culture is conditioned by a post-bellum culture or radical confrontation.  Even in the new democratic context, the adversaries still identify themselves as irreconcilable enemies.  In consequence, negotiations and the ample political consensus tend to be possible only when they arrive at the “brink of the abyss” and a solution is necessary for the country to keep on functioning under a minimal accord (the logic of “secrecy” or absence of dialogue continues). Nicaragua faces structural difficulties that make the proper functioning of political institutions difficult (political culture, resource limitations).  Likewise, most Nicaraguans express their dissatisfaction with the working of democracy, so that among the main challenges faced by the Nicaraguan political system are: overcoming the institutional fragility expressed in the little confidence and credibility that many Nicaraguans have in their key institutions, (municipal elections held November, 2008 seem to represent a tipping point, the perception of the majority is that there were more and more serious irregularities than before), sponsoring spaces for an ample and highly representative dialogue, transcending the debate on procedural and contextual issues, and recovering the hope of the population in politics. 

On the other hand, economic problems which Nicaragua has been experiencing since 2004, such as: the constant increase in international oil prices, the deterioration of the terms of commercial exchange among the main Nicaraguan export products (coffee crisis), the rise in prices of raw materials, the national energy crisis, adverse climate phenomena (El Niño and Hurricane Félix), as well as the effects proper to the political dynamics of national and municipal electoral processes (2006 and 2008, respectively). These problems were reinforced in 2009, since the Nicaraguan economy was affected by the financial and economic world crisis, whose effects had a negative impact on its principal indicators. The continuous de-acceleration of the productive offer, internal demand and external cash flows restricted growth possibilities in key sectors of the nation’s economy such as construction, industry, commerce, transportation and communications. Likewise, Nicaragua presents pending  subjects in poverty reduction and employment generation; high levels of dependence on external support and financing (remittances, donations, loans and foreign investment).

From this perspective, the challenges faced by the Sandinista government in 2010 and 2011 pass through the resolution of two dilemmas: ¿How to deepen or at least maintain, a social agenda that is acknowledged to be the main achievement of the government’s administration in the midst of a national and international economic unfavorable context?  And, what societal response capability does Nicaragua have in face of an eventual deterioration of the social and economic conditions without ample-base institutional agreements that will allow the mitigation of such difficulties?