In a surprise announcement, Nicaragua’s influential Catholic bishops late on Friday said that government and civil delegates had agreed to create a “verification” commission and invite independent international bodies to probe violence that has left at least 170 people dead.
In a twist after a morning session that closed in an apparent impasse, the opposing representatives also reached a consensus to prepare a plan to remove pervasive road blockades that anti-government activists have built to fend off security forces — a key government demand.
Cardinal Leopoldo Brenes said the Catholic Church had asked Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega to move up the next general election — a move activists have vehemently called for — from the currently slated 2021 to next year.
Brenes said the president did not concretely answer, instead telling the bishops: “We reiterate our full readiness to listen to all the proposals within an institutional and constitutional framework.”
The leftist leader has in the past expressed no intention of stepping aside.
Bishops were yesterday morning to reconvene government and civil representatives to discuss “the process of democratization of the country.”
Nicaragua’s descent into chaos was triggered on April 18, when relatively small protests against now-scrapped social security reforms were met with a government crackdown.
Those demonstrations mushroomed into a popular uprising, with anti-government protesters facing off against police and pro-Ortega paramilitaries.
Under the new agreement, Managua would urge the presence of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights — an autonomous branch of the Organization of American States — to investigate “all deaths and acts of violence, the identification of those responsible and a comprehensive plan for the victims so that effective justice is achieved,” Brenes said.
The country would also allow in the UN Commission on Human Rights and a EU delegation.
Those three bodies would accompany a new “verification and security commission,” according to the agreement, “always with the Catholic Church as witnesses and mediators.”
“National dialogue calls for the cessation of violence and threats wherever it comes from,” Brenes said.
Just prior to the bishops’ announcement, the Nicaraguan Center for Human Rights raised the death toll from the months of unrest to 170.
Nicaraguan Minister of Foreign Affairs Denis Moncada, heading the government delegation, had earlier said that the country was suffering “an unprecedented savagery; a wave of crimes that dismays, that frightens.”
However, he stopped short of laying any blame on forces loyal to Ortega, saying that police and public workers have fallen victim to the violence.
The government representatives also lamented the fact that Nicaraguans cannot go out after dark, accusing anti-government protesters of aggravating insecurity.
However, it is widely understood in Nicaragua that the virtual curfew stems from fear of roving armed gangs loyal to the president, who the population accuses of plunging the country into “dictatorship.”
“We are experiencing a wave of violence the government unleashed,” civil alliance representative Carlos Tunnermann said in the morning roundtable.
Activists have erected blockades on more than two-thirds of the country’s roads in a bid to fend off Ortega-backed forces.
The makeshift roadblocks have wreaked economic havoc, halting the delivery of goods and thwarting regional trade.
The Nicaraguan Foundation for Economic and Social Development has estimated that the country could lose up to 150,000 jobs by the end of the year if the crisis persists.
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