“Ortega cambió en semanas”

 “Ortega cambió en semanas”

According to an article from El Nuevo Diario (http://impreso.elnuevodiario.com.ni/2007/01/18/politica/39043), member of the Congress and leader of the ALianza Liberal Nicaraguense, Eduardo Montealrgre claims that the policies of President Ortega are really different form those proposed during the campaign. The promises made during the campaign as well as the policies supported previously have disappeared. In particular the intention to carry on the constitutional reform toward parliamentarism seems to have been reversed now that Ortega is in power.  Montealegre said “Cuando gobernaban desde abajo, querían parlamentarismo, y cuando gobiernan desde arriba, quieren un excesivo presidencialismo.”

Another article from BBC Mundo presents how Ortega has increased the powers of the president in Nicaragua by establishing institutions to monitor ministries and their policies that are not elected.  The article claims that he is following in the footsteps of Cuba and Venezuela with these policies. Ortega seems to have completely changed his position about fundamental policies. This is a serious problem of accountability given the fact that Ortega was elected because of his campaign’s promises and his past declarations.

According to the model proposed by Stokes, there are several possible explanations for the abrupt changes in Ortega’s policies.  The most likely in this case is that President Ortega did not think he could get elected following the policies he actually preferred and so he ran his election campaign on a platform he had no intention of following through with.  According to the logic of Stokes’ article, Ortega must think that his new policy direction will have better outcomes for voters, and the success of the outcome will win them over.  Unlike in Stokes’ article, however, the reforms proposed in this case affect presidential power, rather than the economic reforms.  Since these presidential reforms will not have as direct an impact on voters as economic reforms, Ortega may simply be assuming that a large percentage of the electorate will be indifferent to the changes.  Another explanation is that given his term limit and restrictions on reelection, Ortega doesn’t care how popular his policies are with the electorate.

-Nicaragua Group