27 de noviembre 2024
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“They killed me so many times,
I died so many times,
Yet here I am, resurrecting,
Like the cicada.”
-Maria Elsa Walsh
The constitutional reforms ordered by the dictatorship for approval by the National Assembly are a fatal blow to municipal autonomy, just as they are to the democratic state. As happened in two previous occasions when it was abolished, this time another autocratic regime has resorted to deception to avoid openly declaring the end of autonomy.
In light of the facts, there is something about municipal autonomy that bothers dictators. Even in the case of the Ortega regime, which already governs all municipalities and with the full subordination of the National Assembly, it had to deliver the final blow to remove it from the equation.
The modern municipality, and hence municipal autonomy, was born in Nicaragua with the 1893 Constitution, whose text dedicated eleven articles to municipal government. Specifically, Article 147 recognized political autonomy by emphasizing that “in the exercise of their exclusive functions, [municipalities] shall be absolutely independent of other powers…” This framework gave rise to the first Organic Law of Municipalities in 1894. However, two years later, constitutional reforms wiped out nine of these articles, particularly those concerning the foundations of the municipalities’ political autonomy.
After recovering from the fall of Zelaya’s autocratic regime, municipal autonomy returned, rooted in the elective nature of local authorities. But in 1937, a new dictator, Anastasio Somoza García, indefinitely canceled municipal elections through an executive decree, thereby once again annihilating the core of local autonomy. Two years later, the dictator ordered a new Constitution that, in Article 303, stated: “The local administration of cities, towns, and villages shall be entrusted to Municipalities appointed by the Executive Power every two years.” End of the story, until 1987 when the revolution restored municipal autonomy.
Now, 37 years later, this new dictatorship has decreed the death of municipal autonomy through the back door, eliminating four substantial paragraphs from Article 177. The first paragraph, which previously stated “Municipalities enjoy political, administrative, and financial autonomy. The administration and governance of the same belong to municipal authorities,” now only says “The administration and governance of the same belong to municipal authorities.” In other words, they’ve slashed the first part that defined the three dimensions of municipal autonomy. More clearly than ever: it’s a premeditated, calculated machete blow, full of malice.
To show that the above is not rhetoric or exaggeration, they followed by eliminating three paragraphs that developed substantive aspects of municipal autonomy, such as the obligation of the central government to transfer a percentage of the National Budget to municipalities, the breakdown of autonomy through a Municipalities Law, and, not least, the municipality’s position within the state and its relations with the central government and other authorities.
If we acknowledge that between 1990 and 2006 the municipality reached its highest point in Nicaraguan history (constitutionalizing the three spheres of autonomy, the law on budget transfers, the municipal career law, the municipal budgetary regime law, and the national decentralization policy, among others), today we must note that only barren land remains.
Where there were once processes of self-government, today we find managers acting as subordinates to the orders from Managua; where there was once decentralization, we now find subordination to a chain of command in which municipalities occupy the lowest level with no power or room for initiative.
The death of municipal autonomy did not happen overnight. Since returning to power in 2007, the Ortega regime found a very different state from the one it left in 1990. The complexities of an institutional design that had evolved in the previous years were too complicated for people used to order and command. But instead of adhering to the existing norms, they began to dismantle them or empty them of content.
In the municipal sphere, during its first term (2007-2012), it nullified the spaces for open and plural citizen participation, which were the Municipal Development Committees; in their place, they imposed the Citizens’ Power Councils (CPC), which served no other purpose than what they were designed for: political control. Then came the clumsy alteration of the proportionality of the city councils, the cosmetic gender parity of the councils, and later, in subsequent periods, the manipulation of how budget transfers were calculated, even the arbitrary mutilation of them.
If the above was a gradual way of stripping power from municipalities, the first fatal blow was the massive fraud in the 2008 municipal elections. Following the footsteps of Zelaya and Somoza, through the theft of the popular will, they reached the heart of political autonomy that stems from the mandate of voters, which is the foundation of municipal autonomy in general.
Since that date, some of the elected officials knew that their positions were owed to FSLN operators who had manipulated the real results. Voters knew their votes had no value and that the authorities in front of them lacked legitimacy and the will to govern for the entire population. Since then, the dictatorship understood that the most direct route to dismantling municipal autonomy was to steal the elections. From that fraud, this death was foretold.
Why does the same person who signed the restoration of municipal autonomy in 1987 now endorse its abolition? There would appear to be at least two explanations: 1) because they didn’t realize what they were signing, 2) because the surrounding factors, the war, and other FSLN leaders forced them to. But it’s clear that they never believed in it themselves.
Surely this third occasion will not be the last time municipalities are stripped of their autonomy because they will have recovered it by the time the local tyrants are gone. The municipal autonomy, in its eternal return, will come back, as will the rooted aspirations of the population in the municipalities to govern their own decisions.
This is the “small inconvenience” the dictatorship faces in attempting to sell these reforms as a model of greater direct participation when, in reality, they are confiscating popular sovereignty for the benefit of one family. Municipal autonomy, like the cicadas, will return, even after years buried under the earth.
This article was published in Spanish in Confidencial and translated by Havana Times. To get the most relevant news from our English coverage delivered straight to your inbox, subscribe to The Dispatch.
