What is the ‘Fight Against Corruption’ in Nicaragua?

---

What is the ‘Fight Against Corruption’ in 

Nicaragua?

Jon Cloke

Department of Geography, Loughborough University, The United Kingdom, 

E-mail: [e-mail].

 

Two hundred years ago in Great Britain, the political system was dominated by 

electoral power exercised through rotten boroughs, a system characterized by 

institutionalized corruption - these electoral boroughs were owned by local elites, 

and voting was restricted to a handful of people. Whilst industrially she was the 

wonder of the world, the political system in Great Britain was restricted, corruption 

was the norm, and it seemed impossible to imagine that such an ancient system 

could be changed. By the time of the Reform Act of 1832 however, Britain had 

already been going through a process of constitutional change lasting for hundreds 

of years – it is only now, from our position of 20/20 hindsight, that we choose 

to interpret all of the events since the signing of the Magna Carta in 1215 as if it 

were some seamless whole, an inevitable process that would lead to the position of 

superior moral governance that we appear to think we are in now.

  Similarly in the USA, at a time from the 1860s onwards when that country 

began to emerge as a dominant global force, administrations such as that of Taft 

and of Ulysses S. Grant became by-words for corruption, and graft in the US was 

widespread at the beginning of the 20

th

 century. Even after the beginning of the 

‘cleansing’ of US politics that began in the 1900s, there was plenty of substance to 

the sub-text of corruption that continued throughout that century and -if we are to 

believe some observers- plenty of reason to believe that corruption in the US is on 

the rise again, as the stories of mass corruption from the administration of Iraq and 

contracts and procurement from the Pentagon would seem to testify.

  But the point is that both Great Britain and the USA have experienced 

massive increases in economic and political power at a time when politics could be 

bought and paid for. Since that era, examining the succession of scandals emitting 

from the European Commission and in particular the seemingly never-ending 

involvement of European countries in indefensible arms deals with some of the 

most repressive regimes on the planet, it might sometimes appear that if we have 

Tribuna Académica

110

Encuentro

 No. 89, 110-113, 2011

---

111

Encuentro No. 89, 110-113, 2011

What is the ‘Fight Against Corruption’ in Nicaragua?

on the whole removed gross corruption from our own countries, it’s merely been to 

externalize it and visit it on the poor South.  

  The countries now laying claim to moral superiority are quick to forget not 

only their own history, then, but also their roles in fostering corruption during the 

Cold War. Corruption in Nicaragua didn’t matter to the USA when Somoza was 

an ally against communism (typified by Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s famous ‘Our-

son-of-a-bitch’ attitude to the Somoza and other Latin American dictatorships), and 

after 1990 neither did increasingly rampant corruption in both the Chamorro and 

Aleman administrations; so long as Nicaragua kept on liberalizing and adjusting, 

so long as the FSLN (the Sandinistas) could be kept out of power, the international 

financial institutions stood by and watched. When we talk about new discourses like 

‘the fight against corruption’, what we’re really talking about is ideology, hegemony.

  Among those countries which constituted the anti-communist alliance 

globally such as the Philippines, South Korea, Taiwan, Japan, not only has the 

development of many of these countries into fully-fledged members of the developed 

nations club been accompanied by widespread corruption and exclusionary political 

practices. This has frequently been at the urging of the US, the G8 and the supra-

national financial institutions. As the scenery changed after 1989, however, in many 

respects the political dynamics have remained the same; in 2005 the Philippines 

was excluded from the short-list for the Millennium Challenge Accounts set up by 

the US whilst Nicaragua is included, on the public grounds that the Philippines 

has failed to make satisfactory progress against corruption. More cynical observers 

believe, however, that inclusion on the list has more to do with the fact that Nicaragua 

continues to maintain a symbolic military presence in Iraq, whilst the Philippines 

unilaterally withdrew its’ troops.

  Similarly, the massively corrupt and oppressive dictatorship of Karimov in 

Uzbekistan continues to receive millions of dollars of US aid whilst the US maintains 

Karshi-Kanabad Airbase (named, with delightful irony, Camp Stronghold Freedom) 

in Uzbekistan. As Mr. John J. Maresca, vice president of international relations for 

Unocal Corporation made plain in 1998 when he appeared before the congressional 

committee on international relations, however, this has less to do with the spread of 

good governance and democracy than with oil: “Unocal foresees a pipeline which 

would become part of a regional system that will gather oil from existing pipeline 

infrastructure in Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Russia.”

  In addition, as the frequent appearance of an unmarked CIA Gulfstream V 

at Karshi-Kanabad airbase suggests, Uzbekistan is one of those countries to which 

unnamed prisoners are extraordinarily rendered by the US intelligence services so 

that they can be tortured. How delightful, then, that in the aftermath of the May 

2005 massacres of unarmed civilians by security forces in Uzbekistan the Foreign 

Office of the UK claimed with pride that one aspect of UK aid to Uzbekistan was a 

centre for the rehabilitation of torture victims - the UK is providing a rehabilitation 

centre for the victims of the torture which, as a member of the US-sponsored 

coalition in Iraq, we are aiding and abetting. 

 Not only governments or political parties are involved in this new 

environment for corruption. Today, corruption is commonplace within financial 

organizations such as the Inter-American Development Bank which are loudest in 

---

What is the ‘Fight Against Corruption’ in Nicaragua?

112

Encuentro No. 89, 110-113, 2011

their public declamation of corruption and where, as Martin Andersen of Insight 

Press reported on 30/9/02, kickbacks to bank officials by contractors are not so 

much rife as an expected part of the bidding process. In their dealings with external 

agencies, whilst organizations such as the International Development Bank and the 

World Bank are unable to cure themselves of their addiction to large dam projects, 

cases such as that of the Itaipu (Brazil), Bujagali (Uganda) and Yacyreta (Argentina) 

dams, projects creating little except millions of dollars in bribes and kickbacks for 

the wealthy, will continue. 

  The plaintive cries of ex-President Arnoldo Aleman of Nicaragua that those 

attacking him are “ingrates, sinverguenzas (shameless)” should therefore attract some 

sympathy; he was selected not only by the rich elites in Managua and Miami but by 

influential actors in the USA for being exactly what was needed – just as in the fable 

of the frog and the scorpion

1

, Aleman simply was what he was, but the rules of the 

game had changed around him. The powerful international financial institutions 

sang his praises and continued to shower him with loan money, large amounts of 

which has now disappeared and which increasingly impoverished Nicaraguans will 

be expected to pay back on his behalf. The principles of sovereign debt and sovereign 

responsibility, like the principle of papal infallibility, mean that the powerful aid/

loan institution never has to say sorry, never admit that it was wrong and never, 

never has to take responsibility for the misery that it has wrought.

  Nicaragua’s corruption isn’t just the creation of external intervention, 

though - from the position of Nicaragua as a colony of the Spanish Crown up until 

today, the exploitative cultural and social dynamic that led to caudillismo made 

the development of an internally-regulated, just and equitable society a virtual 

impossibility. Immunity from the law under the Nicaraguan constitution for the 

President on downwards may have derived originally from Spanish law as a means 

of protection from the power of the crown, but those who were to be protected 

by such laws quickly began to use them to become that from which the majority 

of Nicaraguans need to be protected. Power in Nicaragua is to be kept away from 

the people, a bargaining token for elite to deal with elite – how else to explain 

the continuing negotiations between the ‘avowed enemies’ of the FSLN and the 

Alemanista faction of the Liberal party to negotiate the ex-president’s release from 

jail? 

  Under the PLC/FSLN pact up to 2001, the exploitative dynamic was 

worsened through the constitutional ‘reforms’ passed by the national assembly in 

1999 and 2000, in which immunity was extended to both ex-president and vice-

president, as well as the candidates for both posts in the losing party, and in which 

the president could confer immunity at will. Despite the current plight of Aleman, 

the Nicaraguan state is still divided between the Alemanista PLC and the FSLN, so 

1  The scorpion was stranded on an island in the middle of a stream which was rapidly rising because of a flood. 

A frog swam past, and the scorpion called out: “Frog, give me a ride on your back to the other side, or I shall 

surely drown.” The frog replied: “I think not – you are a scorpion and if I give you a ride you will sting me.” 

But the scorpion carried on pleading, and eventually persuaded the frog to give him a ride.

  As the frog got half-way over to the other side, he felt a sharp pain in his back as the scorpion stang him. “Why 

did you do that?” the frog cried, as he felt the poison paralyse him, “for now we shall both surely die!”

  “Why, I am a scorpion and it is in my nature,” said the scorpion, “you knew what I was when you picked me 

up…” and with that, both slipped below the waters and were drowned.

---

113

Encuentro No. 89, 110-113, 2011

What is the ‘Fight Against Corruption’ in Nicaragua?

that this two-headed monster of Nicaragua continues to treat the republic as an 

estado botín (booty state). Until this corrupt political arrangement is done away with, 

fighting corruption will mean little or nothing.

  So what of the initiatives of President Enrique Bolanos against corruption? 

This is the Don Enrique who, as the Nicaraguan daily El Nuevo Diario reported on 

5/1/2001 had at least 16 members of his family in state posts, and who as president 

claimed in addition a vice-presidential pension, despite not having retired. The same 

Don Enrique, as El Nuevo Diario reported on 14/10/02, who claimed a salary and 

stipends greater than half the salary of the US President in an economy 1/87

th

 the 

size, a man still dependent on negotiating power with an FSLN equally as corrupt as 

the PLC. 

  In reality, not much could be expected from Don Enrique, underpinned as 

he was by a vicious form of the clientelism that affects all countries – a clientelism 

and poverty that in Nicaragua are locked together in a downward spiral. It is easy 

in Nicaragua to dismiss the corruption of Aleman under the glib phrase ‘roba pero 

hace’ (he steals, but he acts); to assume that Nicaraguans accept anyone who’s at 

least a half-competent crook. But in Nicaragua, clientelism for the poor is a survival 

mechanism; support dictated by economic necessity, the whole system a malignant 

ghost of the pre- and post-colonial epoch when survival required attaching yourself 

to a caudillo. 

  But from the people with a will to change, everything is to be expected. The 

emergence of organizations such as Ética y Transparencia (Transparency and Ethics) 

marks a departure for those factions in Nicaragua determined to form a new civil 

society. It is still too early to tell and many of the leading figures in these organizations 

remain linked into the old, abusive system, but if such organizations are viewed 

alongside the groundswell of popular discontent that has been unseating the old 

regimes across the Southern American continent, it may be that at last something is 

beginning to change. 

  As an observer in the Nicaraguan presidential elections in 2001, I watched 

queues of hundreds, thousands, waiting in a ferocious sun for up to eight hours, 

just to vote. These people, along with the hundreds of supporters who gathered 

in Managua in July 2002 to demand signatures from passers-by for the removal of 

Aleman’s immunity are people no longer prepared to accept an imposed reality for 

their country. Old Cold War relationships continue to characterize the South as 

much as the East and it may well be that these Nicaraguans see what is happening in 

Ecuador, in Venezuela, in Argentina, in ‘Orange’ eastern Europe and the ex-Soviet 

Union and are no longer prepared to accept a reality dictated to them by their over-

powerful neighbour to the north.