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Nicaragua’s right-wing opposition has “started to organize against what it claims is President Daniel Ortega’s similar [to Venezuela] intentions to consolidate power in this country” according to a recent Tim Roger’s article “Nicaraguan opposition resists Chavez’s expanding ‘revolution…’”
Rogers writes, “Mr. Ortega, an ally of Venezuela’s president, has promised to implement his own version of ‘direct democracy’…” Ortega’s direct democracy is defined as, the “sharing of power” through the implementation of “Councils of Citizen Power.” The opposition fears that these councils would subvert their local authority through a chain that starts at the neighborhood and progresses to municipal, regional and national institutions.
The term “Direct Democracy” brings to mind the Chicago political machine of the early 20th century that traded favors at the local level, for party loyalty at all levels. Comparing the disenfranchised immigrant population of turn-of-the-century Chicago and Nicaragua’s poorest populations’ struggle to survive, it seems an effective way of consolidating power. Nicaragua’s “Direct Democracy” is an experiment for Ortega’s battle to secure power. The question is will it work. Certainly, Chicago’s machine worked in the burgeoning neighborhoods of Chicago, and it ended up to be the dark side of democracy in the city’s proud legacy.
