For more than a decade – since they moved from the two-story house they occupied in the old center of Managua, to a beautiful colonial-looking construction in the exclusive residential Las Colinas – the headquarters of the Superior Council of Private Enterprise ( Cosep), was always buzzing with activity. Forever. Until Tuesday, November 30.
On November 12, the workers of the entity – at the time, a score of names populated their payroll – were summoned to a meeting at the office, without knowing in advance why they had been summoned by María José Villavicencio, until then moment, executive director of Cosep.
CONFIDENTIAL learned that, during the meeting, the workers were presented with the panorama of the Superior Council – subjected not only to attacks and political pressure, but also to great financial limitations – informing them that twelve of them would be fired without telling them who.
For the next three hours, staff sat at their desks, waiting to be called to management, while they speculated among themselves who would and who would not be fired.
In the end, twelve of the twenty learned that they had less than three weeks of job security left, and that they could start looking for another job. Several of them were already abroad, or making plans to leave, before the siege to which they were subjected, after the arbitrary arrest of the president of Cosep, Michael Healy, and the vice president of the entity and president of the Union of Producers of Nicaragua (Upanic), Álvaro Vargas, October 21. An act that also pushed the resignation of two chamber presidents in the days after.
The result was that all the personnel in the Press, Economic, Legal, and Administrative areas were closed, and only an accounting assistant remained working (the accountant was also fired), an assistant to support the presidency and the new director, Eduardo Fonseca, plus a gardener, a janitor, and two drivers.
Some workers who had already reached the corresponding age, took the opportunity to start their retirement procedures, while some immediate resignation was also registered. Given the economic limitations of the entity, they were informed that the settlements will be delivered in parts, according to the agreements made with each one.
Financial difficulties and an uncertain outlook
The beautiful courtyard lined with arches and columns that converge in a simple fountain inside the Cosep headquarters now remains almost empty. However, three officials – the director of one of its chambers, a former president of another chamber, and an incumbent president – recall, all three from anonymity, what that union entity was like in ancient times.
“We are facing an uncertain and very complicated outlook,” acknowledged the president of a chamber attached to the entity, who requested that his identity be omitted to avoid reprisals such as those suffered by other counterparts.
“For a long time, the chambers have been having difficulties to cover their own expenses, including the payment of their monthly fees, which affected Cosep’s ability to cover its administrative costs,” explained the manager.
“The availability of resources is very limited. The Government wants to see Cosep dead, and that is why we were sure that, after arresting Michael and Alvaro, they were going to make a direct, de facto intervention in all our affairs, including the financial one, “he admitted.
Before April 2018, Cosep lived another time, maintaining an alliance with the regime that was even registered in the Political Constitution as the “consensus model”, broken by the bloody consequences of the Ortega repression against the social outbreak of that month, in which Cosep joined the citizen demands for justice, freedom and democracy.
Precisely, the government’s intention to see Cosep dead, to which the manager refers, makes much more sense, when it is recalled that “the Government knows that Cosep financed and supported many efforts in favor of political prisoners, both in terms of regarding legal advice, help with food for themselves and their families; as well as the cost of transfers, shelter, and hospital care of the wounded, “he said.
Under these accusations, the Ortega regime also imprisoned since last June the former president of Cosep, José Adán Aguerri, who was a member of the opposition Civic Alliance for Justice and Democracy, integrated to be an interlocutor in the failed attempts to dialogue with the regime. in May 2018 and March 2019.
Incidentally, the fact that entrepreneurs do not have plans to participate in an alleged dialogue, (and therefore the regime turn to Aprodesni, to pretend that it has an interlocutor in the private sector), only promotes a greater separation between the union and the Government, after they were once accused of ‘co-governing’.
“The COSEP maintains its political distancing, because the business community is not willing to allow itself to be manipulated by the Government,” he declared.
They were entrepreneurs -not managers- and all volunteers
This source recalls that, in other times, “it was the directors themselves who were in charge of the tasks, because there were not enough personnel for that, voluntarily and free of charge. The most there was an executive director (a position he held for many years, Dr. Orestes Romero Rojas), plus two support secretaries.
“Cosep was always an organization of businessmen, not business executives, and it set out to counter bad government policies. It was never a place for government lobbying, “said the former president.
“The Cosep presidency was seen as a service position, so the president was never allowed to have a salary, to the point that it was seen as corruption. It is true that there was not always money to pay a good staff, but the distance was always maintained with the Government of the day ”, he insisted.
Although Cosep is depleted in terms of the staff it needs to operate, “in reality, what is required is the willingness of its managers; the fact that we have reduced many circumstances does not mean that we cannot function, or stop doing things, “said the manager.
“In the 1980s there was also the imprisonment and persecution of Cosep executives, at some point after a letter was issued questioning the handling of the country’s situation. The remarkable thing is that Ortega was the president in both terms. Still, Cosep went ahead, despite all the limitations, and we will move forward, despite these attacks, “he promised.
