Source:
Asoc.Italia-Nicaragua
Giorgio Trucchi
Wed Oct 25 2006
Next October 26, Coordinadora Civil (CCER) will organize a national rally aimed at supporting the Citizen Agenda "The Nicaragua We Want" (La Nicaragua que queremos) and protesting against the conditionalities imposed by the IMF on the country. Coordinadora Civil, only a few weeks ahead of the national elections, believes that it will never indeed be possible for the Citizen Agenda to become a reality provided it fails to be framed within the conditions required by the country rather than around those imposed by the IMF.
National March against IMF policies: Coordinadora Civil Aims to Gather Over 10,000 people
Next October 26, Coordinadora Civil (CCER) will organize a national rally aimed at supporting the Citizen Agenda "The Nicaragua We Want" (La Nicaragua que queremos).
The goals of this Agenda and the march that will go through the main streets of Managua, deal with very sensitive aspects, such as a demand for resources from the country’s General Budget in order to improve the access and quality of education, health care and housing.
The passing of urgent laws such as the General Water Law, the Law regarding Equality of Opportunities, Access to Public Information, Promotion of Production and Domestic Debt Restructuring, as well as the re-nationalization of energy sources, among others, will be demanded.
The march is also aimed at protesting against the conditionalities imposed by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) on Nicaragua.
According to Georgina Muñoz of CCER "the Nicaragua we want is possible without the conditions imposed by the International Monetary Fund. Nearly 80 per cent of Nicaraguans are living on less than two dollars a day and only 6 out of 10 children go to school. One out of three people are hungry.
The country’s poverty situation and the lack of real policies in favor of most part of the population has led us to frame our demands based on research processes and above all on our daily direct contact with citizens.
For some years now, our priorities have been focused on demanding a restructuring of domestic debt resulting from payments in bankruptcy of private banks, which is illegal, being also illegal to issue Negotiable Investment Certificates (CENIs), transparency of public information, mainly to know how tax revenues are reflected on the country’s General Budget and how the latter is allocated. Until now, it has been impossible to gather information in this respect.
We also call for an increased investment in education and health care. Without these investments it is impossible to think about a real development of the country".
Independent economist and member of CCER, Adolfo Acevedo Vogl, reminded that "60 per cent of the poorest households have an average per capita income of less than US$1.17 a day and nearly 80 per cent of Nicaraguan children live in these households.
These same children reach at the most five years of schooling. With such a schooling record, the jobs they will manage to get for the rest of their lives are jobs that will keep them under the poverty and extreme poverty thresholds. Nicaragua’s expenditure on education is exaggeratedly low.
IMF conditionalities provide for and impose an allocation of resources that prevents the expenditure on education from reaching the levels that are required.
No country in the world has managed to develop without first solving the problem of education. Nicaragua has not solved this problem and the same has to be seriously put forward before the government and the IMF.
No candidate has explained how negotiations with the IMF are going to be carried out so as to improve education and ensure a minimum future perspective for all children in this country.
The media and we, citizens, have to tell politicians to focus on this fundamental issue".
During her intervention, Georgina Muñoz went on recalling how Coordinadora Civil has tried to promote the debate on the process of decentralization and transfer of resources to municipalities as an instrument of national development, respect for the political constitution in terms of municipal and university autonomy and democratization of the different state powers.
"The development of many of these demands – went on Muñoz – is restrained by IMF-imposed conditionalities. There are over 25 conditionalities constraining the investment in education and health care and also restricting the information about the agreements and covenants signed in the area of basic services in exchange for loans negotiated behind people’s backs.
We are going to demand information about these agreements: what they consist of and what we are risking the future of the country for.
Agreements between the Government and the IMF are blocking opportunities and widening the gap between rich and poor and almost nobody realizes it. Only their dramatic effects on the population are there to be seen.
Coordinadora Civil, a few weeks ahead of the national elections, and having the challenge of implementing the Citizen Agenda "The Nicaragua We Want" - presented and signed as commitment by all presidential candidates - believes that it will never indeed be possible for this to become a reality provided it fails to be framed within the conditions required by the country rather than around those imposed by the IMF.
In view of this, we are planning a national march, of an independent nature and without party ideologies, where to express the political will of citizens towards a flexibilization of IMF conditionalities on Nicaragua and to demand negotiation capacity and transparency of information from the future government in those agreements and covenants signed with international financial institutions as well as an open and broad dialogue based on the needs and proposals for the Nicaragua we want".
At the present time, Coordinadora Civil is carrying out an international campaign "Against IMF conditionalities", through which tens of thousands of people from different countries are sending letters of protest to the IMF Managing Director" (You can send the letter through CCER website)
All this debate is contributing to raise critical awareness about these issues among citizens. Over 20,000 signatures have been collected in Nicaragua and will be submitted to the National Assembly next October 26, so that these demands prevail.
The march is also aimed, according to the document presented by Coordinadora Civil, at mobilizing people in a conscientious and informed way, in order to have incidence and reach a Nicaragua without IMF conditionalities.
Organizations from all parts of the country will be participating in the march as well as university students who, in recent weeks, have developed a thorough collection of signatures at universities, which will be presented to deputies.
The CCER aims at gathering at least 10,000 people in the event.
Among IMF conditionalities imposed on Nicaragua are the freezing of total government salaries and above all those of the education and health sectors, the transfer of new roles to municipalities, thus freezing - at the same time – the transfer of economic resources, the reforms to the Political Constitution of the country in order to "review" constitutional allocations to Public Service Universities, Municipalities and the Judicial Power, a comprehensive revision of the Tax Code, the setting of a maximum ceiling on public spending, the payment of domestic debts with funds released through External Debt Relief (supposedly, these resources should be used in Poverty Reduction Strategies), certain tariff rate increases for public services now being controlled by private companies (25 per cent in 2005, 6 per cent in 2006 and then automatic adjustments for Union Fenosa that has control over power supply), thus subjecting even the corresponding regulation entities to this conditionality.
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