by the El Reportero’s news services
César Zamora
The U.S. Embassy today confirmed what many already suspected: the U.S. fiscal-transparency waiver for Nicaragua—and the $3 million in bilateral aid attached to it—will not be renewed this year.
The suspension of the transparency waiver—a more symbolic than financial blow to the Sandinista government—now sets the stage for Washington’s decision on the property waiver, and the whopping $1.4 billion in multilateral loans that’s tied to it. Given the tense campaign season in Washington, some analysts say it’s not unlikely the U.S. will cancel the second waiver as well—a move Nicaraguan businessmen have likened to an “atomic bomb” dropped on the country’s budding economy.
Business leaders are urging the U.S. government to let Nicaragua sort out its own internal problems without turning the screws on the country’s economy, as it did with the trade embargo in the 1980s.
“We have the capacity to resolve our own institutional issues, but it’s going to take some time,” says Nicaraguan businessman César Zamora, vice president of the Association of American Chambers of Commerce in Latin America (AACCLA). “In the meantime, the U.S. can’t drop a nuclear bomb on Nicaragua and say, “You pick up the pieces and then you’ll win back the support from U.S. government.”
José Adán Aguerrí, president of COSEP, Nicaragua’s largest federation of business chambers, agrees. “American authorities aren’t going to make Nicaragua more democratic by impoverishing the country even more,” he says. “It’s not the Nicaraguan government that is going to be the big loser from the loss of the waivers.”
The cancelation of the property waiver would jeopardize Nicaragua’s ability to get much-needed development and budget assistance loans from multilateral institutions where the U.S. has a strong voice and vote. The possible cancelation of those loans could mean the loss of $1.4 billion in rural electrification, health and infrastructure projects that are fundamental to the government’s plans to combat rural poverty over the next five years, Aguerri says.
Human Rights group reports over 400 arbitrary arrests in Cuba last May
The opposition Cuban Commission on Human Rights and National Reconciliation reported Thursday that at least 423 arbitrary arrests were made for political reasons in May of this year.
In a communiqué released in Havana, the group led by activist Elizardo Sanchez said that the growing trend to make arbitary political arrests continues to be “disturbing.”
In its customary monthly report, the commission said that in May, for the first time in 50 years, the Cuban government offered figures on the island’s prison population, putting the total at 57,337.
The rights commission, however, estimates the number of inmates at between 65,000 and 70,000.
“The Cuban government has among the highest number of prisoners per 100,000 inhabitants in the world,” the commission said, and asked that Cuban jails be opened to inspection by international organizations like the Red Cross.
The Communist Party daily Granma reported in May that Cuba has 57,337 prisoners, of whom more than 31,000 are locked up and almost 26,000 are in “open facilities.”
In the last six months, according to these official figures, 10,129 inmates have been set free for different reasons, including the more than 2,900 who where pardoned last December by the Raul Castro government.
