The author is past president of the Movement for Sandinista Renovation, an economist by training, and well connected both inside and outside the country. This article reflects and explains some of the discontent within the opposition of forces connected to the traditional oligarchy.
The “soft landing” and the “monkey” theory
By Enrique Sáenz, March 29, 2021 in Confidencial
“There, in that chair sat down one of the members of what you call the oligarchy, to ask us to not impose sanctions on Ortega”
In appearances, articles and interviews the expression “soft landing” is repeated. An apparently sweet and innocent phrase that conceals a whole cluster of interests and strategy conceived by a sector of the elites who abundantly benefit from the economic and political model that Daniel Ortega implanted.
That model, it is pertinent to recall, was based on the dictatorial exercise of power, dismantling the democratic institutional structure, selective repression, electoral fraud, in combination with mechanisms for the accumulation of fortunes based on the manipulation of the branches of the State to impose predatory pricing, divvy up perks, administer market reserves, milk public resources through manipulated bidding and contracts, and in addition, on the protection and profitability of illicit capital.
Given that the strategy puts into play the present and future of us Nicaraguans, it is important that we understand what is meant when soft landing is mentioned.
The expression was coined before April 2018, and basically designates a path for a negotiated political transition.
What does this soft landing imply?
Examining statements and expositions of different spokespeople confirms that the strategists of the elite start from an analysis that combines, among other factors, the following facts: first, the economic model based on the subsidy of the Venezuelan aid had dried up, which weakened the bases for the economic and social maintenance of the regime; secondly, the US Congress showed an unexpected bipartisan consensus in favor of democracy in Nicaragua, and as a correlation, hostile to Ortega. This new atmosphere included the passage of the Nica Act and the threat of sanctions (Roberto Rivas was sanctioned in December 2017). The wave also pushed the Trump administration and altered the tranquility under which the dictatorship operated up to then. Third, Ortega had signed an agreement with the Secretary General of the OAS, which opened an institutional path for electoral reforms.
On these bases they calculated that a space for negotiation could be generated that would make it possible to transit to a renovation of the political model, a type of Orteguism without Ortega -but with Ortega, which is not a contradiction – that would allow preserving the privileges of one another. One of the mentors of this approach, blatantly wrote the following in a publication: “and all of us have to understand that a society in transition at times has to accept that privileges become rights in order to continue forward.” The sentence eloquently summarizes the “negotiator” approach of the preachers of the soft landing: this for me, that for you. Nothing for the rest.
Likewise, their play was that they could be the pilots and adopted at least three courses of action:
- They hired a US firm that would lobby to contain the Nica Act and the threat of sanctions. In this way they presented themselves to Ortega as partners with the capacity to intercede on his behalf.
- The most prominent groups ran to control the US Chamber of Commerce (AMCHAM), in the pursuit of putting their chips in play, for thinking that it could constitute a privileged instrument for having an impact on US sectors.
- They tried to open a communications channel with the presidential family. A famous lunch in El Carmen became known among business circles, out of which was leaked even what they had to eat.
But the beats and steps of those aspiring to be the pilots arrived too late. By that time the US establishment had already taken a side against Ortega. I was not told this, personally I was called on to participate in a meeting with an influential North American in Washington, who told us, “there, in that chair sat one of the members of what you call the oligarchy, to ask us to not impose sanctions on Ortega.” And later, pointing toward another chair, with the same derision, he added, “and there sat one of the architects of the soft landing, also advocating for Ortega.”
The protests of April 2018 wiped out that strategy, because the protest took the initiative and left everyone off balance. The first one to recover control was Ortega. More seasoned in these fights, he measured risks, costs and time frames, and defined and executed his strategy: gain time opening a body for dialogue, and reorganize forces to later snuff out the protests by fire and sword.
The multiplicity of actors emerged from the efforts of the protests, the toxic environment caused by the criminal onslaught of the regime, and the appearance of the international community as an actor that until then had been distracted, held back for a time the momentum of the pilots.
Nevertheless, February 2019, taking advantage of the storm unleashed against the regime of Maduro, they promoted a new dialogue. When Ortega confirmed that the storm had passed, he kicked the table away again and buried the renewed attempt. Likewise, the pilots failed in their effort to submit to their designs the many-colored web of opposing organizations that emerged from the April rebellion.
Ortega sized up the fragility of the opposition, the limits of the international community and the timorous opportunism of the elites and decided that no one could provide him better guarantees for preserving his patrimony, impunity and spaces of power than he himself. Not gringos nor the OAS nor the opposition, nor the oligarchy offered any guarantee.
The ill-fated warning of Tomás Borge became a short prayer for Ortega: “Anything can happen here except the Frente Sandinista losing power. We can pay any price. Say whatever you want, let us do what we have to do. The highest price would be losing power.”
In the face of the new realities, version two of the soft landing took shape, this time with another pilot, other atmospheric conditions and another landing strip. Now the pilot is Ortega, the conditions are imposed by Ortega, and the landing strip are the Ortega-style elections.
What does this new version of a “saft landing” entail?
With his shortsighted and perry pragmatism, practiced for more than 200 years, the elites recognize that they have to redesign the strategy. You can call it cohabitation, as one called it, national consensus, common law marriage, concubinage, or however you want to call it. It does not matter.
The new soft landing is no longer to look for a harmonious departure of Ortega, but just the opposite, to conceal the return of the elites to the sheepfold controlled by the dictator. They want to use the elections as a fig leaf for hiding their surrender.
Concretely, they are subjecting themselves to participate in elections under conditions that the owner of the circus imposes, with the expectation of providing some degree of legitimacy to the process and thus minimizing international hostility to the regime. In exchange, the anointed electoral organization would be legitimized as the new opposition.
The approach is found intertwined with the “monkey theory”, as a political analyst called it. What does it consist in? They start from the premise that the desperation of the Nicaraguan people to get out of Ortega is such that they would vote even for a monkey in an electoral circus.
They calculate that, with a little help from Ortega, they can impose themselves as the only “opposition” electoral option, subduing the rest of the opposition organizations – under the threat of being left as pariahs in the desert of illegitimacy – and take over the hegemony of the dialogue with Ortega.
The question is whether 75% and more of the Nicaraguans who repudiate Ortega would submit themselves resignedly to that strategy.