Nicaragua keeping canal plans under wraps

One thing that remains constant with governments such as those in Nicaragua and Venezuela, the government does like to control things.

The Committee to Protect Journalists now reports that details of the massive — as in US$50 billion — canal project are hard to find. In fact, it was even hard for reporters to attend the gala groundbreaking ceremony in December. (Reporters covering Nicaragua waterway project obstructed by lack of information)

Government officials told [journalists] to wait in a Managua hotel for a bus that would transport them to the ribbon-cutting ceremony, according to the Nicaragua Dispatch. But the bus never showed up. Tim Rogers, editor of the online news outlet, said that journalists who traveled to the Pacific coast site on their own were turned back by police.

To be honest no one should be surprised that the Ortega govenrment is being tight lipped about the project.

First, it is not in the nature of the Sandanista governments (and Ortega in particular) to be too enamoured with the idea of public scrutiny of government projects.

Second, the Sandinistas — like their patrons in Venezuela — have no great love for free and independent media.

Third, let’s face it , governments in the region in general are not hospitable to having people looking too closely at how money is spent.

And lastly, the partner in the canal is a firm that has an office in Hong Kong but whose founder is all up close and tight with Chinese state industries.

So you have a nice coalition putting the canal together by people who really don’t think it is anyone’s business but their own to know what is going on.

Given the global financial and political implications of another canal cutting through Central America, I would think there would be more pressure from U.S. and European business groups, governments and media outlets to see the paperwork on the building of this new canal.

Remember how conservatives in the U.S. got all hot and bothered when the Panama Canal was returned to Panama? Besides the whole “We stole it fair and square” stuff, they were also going crazy because Hong Kong businessman Li Ka Shing won the contract to handle the ports on either end.

Screams of how the Chinese communists were taking over the canal were heard across the land.  Unfortunately for the screamers, Li is no communist. He is from Hong Kong — a place Heritage Foundations loves for its economic freedom — and has no love for the rulers in Beijing. (In fact, Li is moving a lot of his holdings from Hong Kong to Bermuda. That should say something about how “lcommunist” he is.)

So now here comes a company, also registered in Hong Kong, but whose CEO is all about mainland China.

So, where are the stories? At least stories about how much we don’t know about the project.

Threats leveled against Nicaraguan journalists

Seems El Nuevo Diario is rubbing some people the wrong way.

Some one leveled a death threat against reporter and editor Luis Galeano first by phone and then by hand-delivered package.

And the whole issue: Galeano was looking into irregularities in the Nicaraguan Central Elections Commission.

Journalist receives death threats

For non-Spanish speakers (or those like me working to get my Spanish back) Google Translate gives a rough translation of the situation but enough to understand it.

Irregularities at the elections commission take on a more heated nature this year. The country is heading for elections in November and there are already claims from the opposition that some hanky-panky is  going on. Enough that just as the year started — 11 months before the election — opposition parties were calling for international observers.

Liberals call for international observation of elections in Nicaragua

President Daniel Ortega — yes, that Ortega of 1980s fame — was clearly upset with such calls.

“We are tired of interventions,” he told local media. “If you want to come (foreign observers) to join us, join us, but we want drivers of our elections.”

He added that “the best observers” are the representatives of the political forces at the polling stations.

Unfortunately, the intentions of Ortega and his party are quite clear: Never give up the power again. (And for free journalism, this is not a good thing.)

Ortega got his rubber-stamp courts to let him run for re-election even though it is against the constitution.

And perhaps more telling are the comments of Ortega’s pal Tomas Borge, the last living founder of the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN). He said last year that giving up power, when they were voted out of office in 1990, was a mistake that should never be repeated.

And that is why a story about some strange goings on in the election commission is so important and so dangerous to the ruling elite.

P.S. A special thanks to @bloggingsbyboz for his Tweet on this.

Nicaragua proposes hostile media legislation

The Sandinista government in Nicaragua has proposed legislation says the IAPA that would cause “absurd censorship, self-censorship and serious repression of journalists and the news media.”

• IFEX Report: IAPA criticises legislative bill that would make “media violence” a new criminal offence
• IAPA Statement

The bill was proposed Feb. 3 to include in the Penal Code the offenses of “femicide” and “media violence,” which would be used to prevent women from being disparaged and satirized.

Fines could be as much as 300 days’ wages on “the owner of a news media outlet, the person or social communicator who in the exercise of his or her profession offends, libels, satirizes or denigrates a woman through a news media outlet for the mere fact of being a woman.” The bill would also require the offender to apologize publicly in the same media for the same amount of time or space.

The chairman of the IAPA’s Committee on Freedom of the Press and Information, Robert Rivard, said, “Protection of women and any person in the media is already established under normal libel laws, so there is no need for special legislation that could later be used to the detriment of freedom of the press.”

Rivard, editor of the San Antonio Express-News, Texas, added that the legislative debate is putting the blame for violence against women on the media.

It’s no real surprise that the Ortega administration would propose such legislation. The Sandinistas have never been an organization that supported free and independent media.