World

Sandinistas demand
contra disbandment

Continued from page 1

Almost everybody, and that includes
several UNO supporters, didn’t understand
fully how (the embargo and contra war) had
affected the people of Nicaragua,” Eaven-
son, a resident of the capital, Managua,
since 1983, told the Tribune in a telephone
interview.

The former Montreal resident said all
reliable polls showed the FSLN well ahead
among decided voters, while the undecided
factor increasingly shrank to insubstantial
Proportions as election day neared.

Additionally, a gigantic election rally in
Managua three days before the vote drew
an overflow crowd estimated at between
250,000 and one-half million participants.
The lowest figure, impressive in itself, came
from La Prensa, the opposition paper pub-
lished by UNO’s successful presidential
candidate, Violeta Barrios de Chamorro.
(By comparison, the final rally of UNO
drew only some 60,000 to 120,000.)

Such a large demonstration of support
showed there was “not much substance to
the charges” that supporters showed up
because they feared for their jobs or liveli-
hoods, Eavenson added.

__ It is clear there has been a silent major-
ity, as in North America, in Nicaragua,” he
commented in noting that the vote can not
be taken as a repudiation of the Sandinistas.

“People were too worn out by war and
“economic havoc, and simply couldn’t take it
any more, They saw voting in UNO as a
quick solution. :

“The war of aggression waged for eight
years by the U.S. has borne its fruit.”

Eavenson is a member of Canadians for
Peace and Democracy in Nicaragua, a
group formed last fall to monitor the elec-
toral process. As one who co-ordinated the
committee’s activities during the last six
months, he rejected any notions that the
elections were rigged or subject to vote-
buying, and noted that several monitoring
organizations, including the Organization
of American States, the United Nations
Organization, and the group led by former
US. president Jimmy Carter have declared
the elections were clean and fair.

Several countries donated money to the
electoral process, including Canada. The
United States, however, channelled its
funds into the UNO campaign.

Phil Westman, the Vancouver-based
national co-ordinator of Tools for Peace,
said information collected by the aid group
was that only a handful of the 4,385
polls — nine — were closed, due to contra
activity. Another 12 had to be relocated, he
reported.

While there were some flare-ups reported
between Sandinista and UNO supporters
following the election in outlying communi-
ties, there were few such incidents in Mana-

gua and the situation there was calm,
Eavenson related.

President Daniel Ortega held a meeting
with Chamorro in which “favourable
words” were exchanged, Eavenson said.
But he said Chamorro’s refusal to negotiate
on several crucial questions — the disband-
ing of the U.S. financed contras and their
war of terror against civilians, the name and
structure of the Sandinista army and police,
public ownership of financial institutions
and job security for public employees —
indicate a possible fractious future.

Sandinista initiatives such as the nation-
alization of banks, agrarian reform and the
structure of the army are written into the
country’s constitution. It requires two suc-
cessive annual legislatures with a 60 per cent
vote to change the constitution, Eavenson
pointed out.

Ortega is sticking to the position that
changes must be negotiated. Crucial among

DANIEL ORTEGA... Sandinistas insist
on negotiations.

these is the disbandment of the contras
before any changes or reduction to the army
are carried out.

“The possibilities for vengeance (by con-
tra gangs) against co-ops or FSLN sympa-
thizers are tremendous,” Eavenson noted.

By Feb. 21, 82 per cent of the polls had
reported in. The remaining 18 per cent were
in outlying districts such as villages along
Nicaragua’s English-speaking Atlantic coast,
reachable in many cases only by boat. But
the results of those polls were not expected
to change the basic results of the election.

The polls show 55.2 per cent of the popu-
lar vote went to UNO, and 40.8 per cent to
the Sandinistas. That means 52 seats for
UNO and 37, plus one for Ortega as the
future opposition leader, for the FSLN in
the 90-seat, single chamber National
Assembly. One seat was won by the Social
Christian Party from the Atlantic coast.

Elections in the Atlantic, an autonomous
region, also involved voting for the
Regional Autonomous Council. In the
north, 45 seats went to the electoral-group
Yatama, while Kisan took 45 seats in the
south.

_For the National Assembly, seats were
divided among electoral districts roughly
according to population, Eavenson related.

Results in the municipal races were
slower coming in, but these appeared to
mirror both the national and presidential
voting patterns. Regulations stipulate that
one-half of local council seats go to the
winning party, with the remaining half
divided among the parties according to the
degree of popular support. The councils will
then elect a mayor.

The results may mean some changes in
priorities for Canadian aid groups which for
years have sent materials and expertise to
help Nicaraguans rebuild after the deposing
of the corrupt Somoza regime and more
recently, to sustain the country in the face of
U.S.-financed hostilities.

But for this year, it will be business as
usual as Tools for Peace, the national aid
organization, winds up the current drive
which is roughly estimated to garner about
$% million in material goods and cash,
national co-ordinator Westman said.

“Obviously, there is a need to reassess
our future.” The organization might find,
for example, that the need for medicines, a
Tools for Peace priority, is not as great if the
USS. lifts its embargo now that the Sandinis-
tas are no longer governing, he noted.

But since the group deals with Nicara-
guan non-governmental organizations, there
should be no difficulties in continuing
necessary aid work, Westman said.

TRIBUNE PHOTO — DAN

One year after troop
pullout, Afghanistan

belies U.S.

By WILLIAM POMEROY

Feb. 15 marked the first anniversary
of the Soviet Union’s withdrawal of its
military forces from Afghanistan.

It’s been a remarkable year. Instead of
the quick collapse of the government led
by President Najibullah and the People’s
Democratic Party (PDPA), as predicted
by the West, it is the predictions which
have collapsed. The prestige of the revo-
lutionary government has never been
higher, both inside the country and
internationally.

On the other hand, various contra
bands, although armed to the teeth by
the U.S., Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and
other right-wing sources, have never suf-
fered greater disarray, lower morale or
worse defeats on the battlefield than dur-
ing last year, or seen their chances of
victory become more remote.

The contra leaders, echoing their men-
tors in Washington and the Islamic fun-
damentalist community, continue to
demand the exclusion of the PDPA and
Najibullah from any settlement. But they
have never sounded more removed from
Afghanistan’s realities.

The high-level Bush administration
diplomatic team, headed by the State
Department’s third-ranking _ official,
Robert Kimmitt, which arrived in Pakis-
tan in mid-January, carried with it little
of the ring of arrogant aggressiveness
and cocky pledges of unlimited arms aid
to the contras that marked numerous
other U.S. missions. It was reported, in
fact, to be engaged ina critical review of a
policy that has failed.

Kimmitt’s visit was seen as a prelude
to the meeting of Secretary of State
James Baker and Soviet Foreign Minis-
ter Eduard Shevardnadze, which was, in
turn, part of the preparation for the June
summit meeting of U.S. president
George Bush and Soviet president Mik-
hail Gorbachev. Afghanistan and other
regional conflicts are part of the pre-
summit discussion.

Naturally, Washington and its Afghan
contra clients are trying to put up as bold
a front as possible in preparation for the
top-level U.S.-Soviet talks. The emphasis
has been on trying to strengthen and give
credibility to a contra government to
counterpose the PDPA government in
Kabul. Kimmitt and his team met in
Peshawar, Pakistan, with leaders of

PRESIDENT NAJIBULLAH ... re-
newed credibility as Western embas-
sies open.

prediction

seven rival contra groups to present the
latest concoction of a supposed alterna-
tive government.

During the past year the previous such
scheme, a so-called Islamic Interim
Afghan Government (IIAG), rapidly
dissolved into farce and bloody feud. A
rigged “government” made a one-day
excursion a few miles into Afghanistan,
proclaimed itself, then scampered back
to Pakistan, where it broke up into its
quarreling parts and never administered
anything.

Nowhere has the nonentity of the
IIAG been more hopelessly displayed
than within Afghanistan, where it was
supposed to give united leadership to a
unified assault on Kabul government
forces. The attacks on Jalalabad, Khost,
Khandahar and other government-
defended localities were disasters of
unco-ordinated efforts, with the various
contra bands arriving at and leaving the
battlefield at will.

The Kimmitt mission sought to patch
over this mess and to project a new for-
mula of a “resistance government” with
which to negotiate with the Soviet
Union. That scheme is to set up the
semblance of a “loya jirga,” or grand
assembly that would supposedly repres-
ent all Afghanistan. It would have
between 2,000 and 3,000 members and
be made up of of 10 participants from
each of 216 Afghan districts plus 15 from

each of the seven contra groups.

The scheme defies credibility. Any
pretense of electing assembly members is
short-lived, so contra commanders are
being told to choose them “in any way
you deem feasible and practical in the
prevailing circumstance and conditions
of your locality.” In other words, hand-
pick them.

The whole business is all so vague that
contra sources in the wake of their meet-
ing with Kimmitt said they didn’t know
how it would work and that it was only
by making the proposals vague that any
agreement was reached at all.

This kind of manoeuvre smacks of
desperation. It became more absurd with
the accompanying demand that Najibul-
lah resign and that the PDPA play no
part in a settlement government. The
main thing that has been established in
the past year is the stability and credibil-
ity of the Kabul government.

That Najibullah’s stability is being
widely accepted was indicated in the first
week of January when France re-opened
its embassy in Kabul. It was reported
that Italy and the FRG are preparing to
follow suit.

The three Western powers had been
persuaded by Washington to follow its
lead and evacuate their Kabul embassies
at the time of the Soviet troop withdra-
wal, when the U.S. claimed that Kabul
would quickly fall to the contras. They

‘are now regretting this step and rejecting

the U.S. policy on Afghanistan.

A factor in the change is that the poli-
cies of the Najibullah government on
national reconciliation have been bear-
ing fruit. His peace proposals calling for
a six-month ceasefire to lead to free elec-
tions and demilitarization under UN
supervision, including the halting of
arms supplies to either side by outside
sources, sound increasingly reasonable.

William Pomeroy is a London-based
correspondent for the U.S. People’s Daily
World.

Pacific Tribune, March 5, 1990 e 9