Not Everyone Is Worried About Ortega
Apr 19th, 2008 by Kevin
There is a great article in the Nica Times this week that takes a different view Daniel Ortega and his Sandinista Socialism. The interview is with Yale educated Francisco J. Mayorga - the economist who designed the transition of Nicaragua’s communist-era economy from the 1980s to a free-market economy in the 1990s.
The article is worth a read, but probably one of the best quotes in it is the following:
“I don’t think that in Ortega’s vision of the future, the state plays the same role as it did in the 1980s,” the former Central Bank president said. “The state won’t own farms, or confiscate land. They’re not even going to nationalize companies, with perhaps the traditional exception of electricity and telecom. I don’t think his vision is something very different from a market economy.”
This from a man who is a self proclaimed democratic capitalist should be soothing words to foreign investor ears. Being down there recently ourselves, the attitude of the growing middle and business class is that Ortega has a big mouth but 1980 was a long time ago and things have changed much since then, but as the article points out - democracy isn’t an easy thing to build.
