20 years ago, a few weeks before the decisive national elections in Nicaragua that year, 2006, the Swedish ambassador at the time gave an interview about her appreciation of the political situation in the country. During the conversation, the ambassador expressed her opinion that the intervention of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund in the country's economy was necessary because Nicaraguans were unable to manage their own internal affairs well without foreign tutelage. Far from being exceptional, the banal racism of the ambassador's comment reflects, in the most natural way, the entrenched ideology of Western superiority and the absolute absence of even minimal self-critical humility.
This sick way of perceiving the world on the part of the US and European political classes has hardly changed at all and contaminates practically all their statements regarding international issues. It is the foundation of the Monroe Doctrine, for example, and of the odious hypocrisy of Western spokespersons who shamelessly instruct the rest of the world about what democracy is and what it is not. As if their imperialist societies built on centuries of the most ruthless criminality, genocidal conquest, systematic colonial pillage and slavery, have any moral authority to give lessons to the peoples of the majority world’s peoples whom they plundered for centuries. As our Comandante Daniel once commented "Those who talk about Democracy are the first to disrespect the Democratic Principles of Humanity, to disrespect the inalienable Rights of the Human Species. They don't respect them.”
Confirmation of this reality took place last week with the spectacular violation of the founding principles of the UN by the US president at the very seat of the UN, when he addressed his threats against Iran and Cuba to the plenary of the General Assembly. Then, as if nothing had happened, one after another, the world's government leaders took to the stage and talked about democracy as if democracy could exist in a world that is silent in the face of criminal threats from the head of the most successful organized crime structure in the history of mankind, the US government. In the case of Latin America, now only Brazil, Cuba, Mexico and Nicaragua maintain independent governments free of North American neocolonial tutelage, although always subject to permanent interference of one kind or another. All the other Latin American countries operate with a greater or lesser degree of direct Yankee interference in their foreign policy, in their economy, in their national security and in their justice systems.
Elections and democracy
The corruption scandal surrounding the sinister figure of the Argentine Fernando Cerimedo has revealed the extensive scope across Latin America of electoral interference by the fascist regional influence peddling networks. The regional media have documented how the activities of Fernando Cerimedo and his allies set out to sabotage the integrity of the electoral processes of Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile and Honduras. But the activities of Cerimedo and his cronies are merely another aspect of the ongoing efforts by the US elites and their regional allies, and even Israel, to tarnish the region's electoral processes in favor of far-right candidates. The elections in Ecuador, Peru and Colombia ended with highly questionable results due to multiple anomalies, both during the electoral campaigns and the voting and during the counting processes and the declarations of the results.
It is in this regional context of clearly rigged elections that the governments of Mexico and Nicaragua have initiated electoral reform processes to defend the integrity of their democracies. In Brazil too, Telesur reports that the Workers' Party has demanded that the Supreme Court of Justice of that country investigate foreign political, economic and digital interference in the upcoming elections on October 4th. In Mexico, a special commission established by the government has recommended a series of electoral reforms to protect and strengthen the country’s electoral system . Among other things, the reform proposal includes measures to combat the abuse of artificial intelligence, especially the industrial-scale use of automated “bots". Additionally, the government of President Claudia Sheinbaum has proposed the requirement of not having or acquiring any nationality other than Mexican for candidates for the presidency of the Republic, the governorships of federal entities or the head of the government of Mexico City.
Similarly, Nicaragua has developed an electoral reform proposal focused above all on ensuring stability, security and peace for Nicaraguan families. It proposes to extend the terms of public office to seven years and to eliminate foreign interference, direct or indirect, in elections to public offices. Wilfredo Navarro, Second Secretary of the National Assembly, explained that “coup plotters, traitors to the Homeland, those who incite or promote foreign interference, those who call for military intervention, those who organize with foreign funding, those who support commercial or financial economic blockades, those who call for sanctions against the State of Nicaragua and those failing comply with the Fundamental Principles of the Political Constitution will not be allowed to participate in the elections.”
So both Nicaragua and Mexico are taking the measures that their authorities consider necessary to protect their democracies. Of course, regional fascism and its social democratic allies attack the reforms because they take away the space they have always sought to exploit to destabilize governments that promote true social justice, economic democratization and a firm defense of national sovereignty. The intensification of the genocidal blockade against the Cuban people is precisely due to the strength and legitimacy of its democratic political system with an electoral model which guarantees a high level of direct participation by the population in the political life of the country through the Assemblies of People's Power. The clearest recent example of Cuba’s indisputable democracy was the massive exercise of popular participation in the 2019 referendum to ratify the country's new constitution.
At the international level there is a clear division between countries promoting the human development of their peoples and countries with societies where the interests of business elites dominate. In the first, the business sectors are consulted as components of a democratic society which contribute to the socio-economic development of the country. In the second, it is the very same dominant business elites who decide the country’s socio-economic policies, doing so, of course, against the interests of the majorities. In fact, Western political systems are plutocracies in which the role of elections is to change the configuration of elite dominance and the faces of the political figures who ensure it. No wonder the Italian commentator Fabrizio Casari has written about what he calls "The distorting mirrors of Western democracy" given that the phrase “Western democracy" itself is simply a mirage.
As Francisco Bautista Lara has explained, “Popular democracy is opposed to and contradicts bourgeois democracy, which is essentially exclusive, ending up being drowned in formality and appearances in order to preserve elite interests; it administers the excessive accumulation which irremediably leads to savage, selfish, mercantilist capitalism plundering the environment and human dignity, deepening social divisions and sharpening relations of dependence and subjugation. Popular democracy feeds popular power and at the same time constitutes the ability to preserve effective democracy for the common good which is popular democracy.”
As our Comandante Daniel has commented on the US system "Where there really is a tyranny, a dictatorship of economic power, of military power, is in the United States... With what authority can they demand of other countries that there should be democratic elections? With what authority? Let them first of all establish a true democracy in the United States, because there is no such democracy, it does not exist in electoral political terms, nor does it exist in economic and social terms. Because we now see how the US population suffers from hunger and unemployment... There is poverty there, in the United States there is poverty, there is misery; of course, the misery is not clear because what one usually sees are the big buildings there, everything mirroring consumption in the United States. But the misery is there.”
Nicaragua
It is the Sandinista Popular Revolution which has brought about a truly inclusive and sovereign democracy in Nicaragua. Nicaragua’s much-loved former policy adviser Dr. Paul Oquist, now deceased, once said in an interview in Colombia after the failed coup attempt in 2018, “The Sandinista National Liberation Front is the father of democracy in Nicaragua. Democracy was born in Nicaragua by the Sandinista Front. The Liberals and Conservatives never created a democracy in Nicaragua. They tolerated an overwhelmingly illiterate population and they were very happy with that... What contribution have the Liberals and Conservatives made to democracy in the history of Nicaragua? None. The Sandinista Front built democracy and consolidated democracy in Nicaragua.”
History confirms the accuracy of Dr. Oquist's comment. The Sandinista National Liberation Front, even under the war time conditions imposed by US President Ronald Reagan, made possible in 1984 the first truly democratic elections in the country's history. Compañera Rosario recalled the meaning of that tremendous achievement when she said, “...in the Always Further On that we are, we commemorate the Triumph of the Sandinista National Liberation Front, on November 4th 1984, in the first free elections in our Nicaragua’s history, marking the pace and the direction of the leading role of direct democracy conquered by Nicaragua’s People with the Sandinista Front on July 19th 1979, in the imperishable feat of the triumph of the People of Zeledón, Sandino, Andrés, Carlos, Tomás, Daniel. The Triumph which has freed us from the yokes, opening up the new times of Light, Life and Truth, of Liberation and Democracy as we said, direct, full and true Democracy.”
In 1990, it was the government of Comandante Daniel Ortega which carried out the first peaceful transfer of power in Nicaragua’s history from one national political force to another. Then, throughout the 17 years of neoliberal misgovernment, as Comandante Daniel said in 2023 “while they in government, taking measures that were not consistent with the Agreements which had been reached, including respecting the conquests of the Revolution, protests did occur and there were deaths in the midst of the protests, but it never occurred to us to say, we are going to stage a coup d'état, it did not occur to us to say, we are going to take over the Congress.” Instead, the precise, openly stated objective of the coup promoters in their failed attempt to overthrow the Sandinista government in 2018 was to return Nicaraguan families, the whole of Nicaragua, to the false democracy and corrupt misgovernment of the typical yankee model.
That is why this past July, at the beginning of the consultations on the new reforms, National Assembly president Dr. Gustavo Porras explained, “We cannot go back to the times when they imposed on us a Democracy that is not our Democracy. For us, democracy includes elections, but it's not just elections... Our Democracy is the Democracy of everyone's rights. The democracy of 50-50 gender equity. It’s democracy where we all have the same opportunities and, in addition, where the State has the responsibility to provide them to everyone. That is our Democracy. Our Democracy is aimed at deepening the power of the People and that is why our Democracy has developed a concept which is emblematic of the social structure we are organizing, which is called the People President.”
Our Co-President Compañera Rosario has also explained that, “... Democracy is not just about casting a vote every few years. Democracy is lived daily, ensuring prominence and Rights, ensuring power for the People... Democracy is the daily, participation as protagonists of young people, of peasants, of producers, of workers, of families. Democracy is the participation as protagonists of everyone, for the sake of everyone! Democracy is this new model we are building, which recognizes the abilities, talents and potential of Everyone. It does not exclude anyone!…
"Democracy is what we know and live every day, seeking the Common Good based on Christian values and ideals, out of Love for one’s neighbor; trying to support and accompany those who have been hurt, who are still vulnerable and who demand a responsible, serious government with Christian values to make it possible for them and their families, their communities, our country, to realize all their talents, all their abilities, to work, to start businesses, to prosper!”
“...we know that this is Democracy... highlighting routes towards the Common Good, willing to continue strengthening our free Nation, a Patriotic Nation for Everyone, where the Good of Everyone unites us and reunites us. Democracy means learning to live together harmoniously in a culture of dialogue, in a culture of encounter, in a culture of Peace, which is the one we continue to work for and the one we aspire to build now with the contribution of everyone.”
