Crock Dundee wannabes say living in Nicaragua is like living in the Wild West. There are no rules. Take the rules for electricity theft. Oh, there are none! Between 30 and 40 percent of electricity sent down the antiquated lines is stolen. The IMF is withholding further aid that will NEVER, EVER BE REPAID, because the government hasn't imposed laws to deal with electricity theft. It's rampant for all sorts of reasons, but the government's solution is to criminalize theft above 700 Kilowatts, which is far more than the average home uses. Ortega, the man whose contribution to the Sandinistas was robbing banks on their behalf, railed against all the big businesses who are stealing energy. There are barrios in Managua where 80 percent of the homes and hovels are hooked up to electricity illegally. The big businesses are the only ones with money to pay the bills, taxes, employment, and thieves both domestic and international, Spain specifically. We pay more for electricity than any other country in the Northern Hemisphere. Sure, there's geothermal, but the last President sold his soul to an economic hitman. Back in the 1980's, the IMF and The Economist magazine convinced the former Minister of Energy that oil would never rise above $13 a barrel, and so the IMF loaned money to Nicaragua for expensive, oil-powered generators built to last 20 years in a land of plentiful and constant geothermal energy. Prior to this conversion to fossil based fuel, Nicaragua's energy was more than 70 percent geothermal.
Nicaragua now faces a shortfall in international aid. EU countries have scaled back donations, citing the lack of transparency. Hugo Chavez sold Nicaragua sour crude oil for half the market price, and two percent interest. Ortega sold some (or all?) of the Venezuelan oil at market price and hired a private company to monitor the financial transactions. Generally Accepted Rules of Accounting do not apply. When this scandal erupted, Ortega treated his friends and family (though probably not the step-daughter he allegedly molested for years) and the rest of his entourage to a little R&R in between jaunts to Iran, Libya, Cuba and North Korea. I made the last one up. I am not sure if he has ever visited North Korea, but it seems his style.
The leading Sandinistas want nothing to do with Ortega. Dora Maria Tellez, Commandante 2 in the Sandinista revolution, held a hunger strike in protest of Ortega's dictatorial powers and his denial of her splinter-party status. Carlos Mejia Godoy, a Sandinista and the most famous folk musician in Nicaragua, denied the Sandinistas permission to use his music. "No mas dictadoro" and "No mas dictadora" are scrawled on buildings, walls, and billboards throughout Managua.
There is a great deal of passion here. If Americans were one-tenth as Nicaraguans, George W. Bush would not be in office today. No doubt another crook would have taken over the Presidency, but there would have been far more than a whimper after the 2000 debacle. I hope that the country evolves peacefully, despite La Dictadora Rosarillo Murillo and her incestuous husband, officially referred to as El Presidente. It promises to be an interesting journey.
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