The president of the Superior Council of Private Enterprise (Cosep), César Zamora, who represents the main organization that brings together businessmen in Nicaragua, confirmed this Tuesday to the national media Channel 12about a reactivation of “dialogues” with the government of Daniel Ortega.
The Central American Bank for Economic Integration (CABEI) would be acting as an intermediary in the new approach, according to the union leader’s statements. He also commented that these types of initiatives had been interrupted since 2018, as a result of the protests against the Ortega government.
Zamora, who gave an interview to a media outlet for the first time after assuming the leadership of the employers’ association, said that this rapprochement takes place at the level of “Cosep chambers” in order to “resolve the issues that affect them.”
“The chambers have dialogues with the authorities today, and resolving these issues is on their agenda there,” Zamora said.
“(CABEI) is a facilitator, it has done so in a transparent and proactive manner and it is something that we appreciate, for having the courage to, in the midst of a difficult situation, put ourselves in the ring. We have a polarized society and this polarization has to become something more constructive,” he added.
After the 2018 anti-government protests, the businessmen said that the “dialogue and consensus model” had been “broken”, after a unilateral reform of the Managua pension system and the murders of protesters.
Ortega, for his part, accused the private sector of colluding with demonstrators and sectors that sought to carry out a “coup d’état.”
The approach of businessmen to the Ortega government is known a little more than a month after a CABEI visit in Managua, in which the agency offered millionaire funds to this sector, hit by the pandemic, the political crisis and the fall in foreign investment. During the visit, CABEI reportedly brought together the Nicaraguan private sector together with government authorities.
“In that sense, we appreciate CABEI’s opportunity (…) in a society where you move, you are criticized. More talks are required than shouting, everyone must make efforts to build bridges of understanding and generosity”, urged Zamora during the interview in the channel 12 from Nicaragua.
Regarding the arrest of important leaders of the private sector, including the former president and former vice president of Cosep, Michael Heally and Alvaro Vargas respectively, Zamora said that he felt “hurt” by their arrests but indicated that they were supporting their families, without delving further into the subject.
Both Heally and Vargas were convicted by the Nicaraguan justice for the alleged crime of undermining national integrity and conspiracy to undermine national integrity in a trial held behind closed doors in the cells of the prison known as El Chipote, in Managua.
The Nicaraguan justice sentenced Heally to 13 years in prison. Similarly, the vice president of this union, Álvaro Vargas, was sentenced to nine years in prison.
Criticism of Zamora’s position
Zamora’s statements and his decision to talk with the government have been criticized by the opposition. Zamora has been a defender of the “model of dialogue and consensus”, which has consisted of maintaining the relationship between Ortega and private enterprise for more than a decade in Managua under criticism even from Washington.
“César’s (Zamora) performance is really pathetic and he is definitely restarting a path that took the first steps eleven years ago and he believed it was the path to a better Nicaragua and he sold it to us as the best,” said the former Liberal deputy Elisha Nunez.
“Today he wants to get us back on those paths. César shows that he has no scruples and believes that, despite so many deaths, exile and prison, this model will work again,” said Núñez.
For his part, the co-founder of the ruling Sandinista Front and today a critic of Ortega, Óscar René Vargas, said by telephone to the voice of america that the meeting between businessmen seeks to send a message to the United States to stop the possible exclusion of Nicaragua from the free trade agreement, known as Cafta.
“Zamora appears for several reasons, one is to send a message to the US after the CAFTA issue was once again put on the table. They want to tell him: we businessmen are fixing ourselves up”, he indicated.
According to Vargas, Zamora also appears in the public arena “as the vanguard, as the first to negotiate with Ortega,” but he believes that this will seek to expand with other sectors.
“This means that the president and vice president of Cosep will go under house arrest, but it allows the opposition, especially the other political parties, to take the next step of negotiating with Ortega, ahead of the elections in November this year. of the municipal ones”.
The voice of america He tried to communicate by telephone with the president of the Nicaraguan private sector, however he did not answer the calls.
Ortega established a pact with the businessmen after returning to power, which consisted in Ortega assuming the political role, while big capital would assume the economy, however this model called “dialogue and consensus” was broken in 2018, after the violent protests that left more than 300 dead.
The then United States Ambassador Laura Dogu questioned this model in her last speech given in October 2018 and underlined that the business community “valued stability more than sustainability”.
“Before April, when I spoke about these issues, the business community often told me that they could sacrifice some of these fundamental rights because Nicaragua was not at war, nor was it suffering from the violence of the countries of the northern triangle,” Dogu said.
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