CAFTA Passage in Nicaragua Doubtful

While President Bolaños was with the other Central American and Dominican Republic presidents in the US licking the boots of their transnational masters by promoting the Dominican Republic and Central American Free Trade Agreement (DR-CAFTA), passage of the trade agreement by Nicaragua faded further into the distance. The FSLN Bench in the National Assembly has already announced its opposition to the unfair trade treaty. Last week the Constitutional Liberal Party (PLC) announced that it won't vote to ratify DR-CAFTA unless the Bolaños government presents parallel legislation that will protect vulnerable sectors such as agricultural production and labor rights. The PLC had previously announced that it wants to wait until the US Congress has passed CAFTA. At this writing Bush doesn't have the votes in Congress to pass the trade agreement so it has not been scheduled for a vote. With both the FSLN and the PLC opposing or supporting fatal conditions, Bolaños has no more than eight votes he can count on in the National Assembly.

Last week as well, more groups in civil society announced their rejection of the trade pact. Alvaro Fiallos, President of the National Union of Farmers and Ranchers (UNAG), criticized Bolaños for failing to provide intelligent and meaningful solutions to the severe problems being faced by Nicaraguan families in the countryside. Fiallos lamented the fact that hundreds of thousands of families were facing the terrible reality, repeated year after year, of having no seeds to plant and thus no food security for the coming year. The president of the largest agricultural organization in the country went on to warn that if DR-CAFTA is implemented, poverty in the countryside would intensify. "It would mean unemployment for the majority of Nicaraguan farmers," Fiallos said.

On May 13 a variety of organizations demanded that the National Assembly schedule time to analyze and debate the effects DR-CAFTA would have on the Nicaraguan population and to make alternative proposals to avoid these negative effects taking place. Amado Ordonez, Executive Director of the Humboldt Center, said, "We have said that DR-CAFTA will not benefit the majority of Nicaraguans, but rather is designed to concentrate opportunities within minority groups [of political and corporate elites]." He mentioned the necessity for a water law that would make the exportation and privatization of Nicaraguan water impossible and a law that would protect national biodiversity from the threat of genetically modified seeds.