COVID-19 and Democracy – Nicaragua vs. Canada
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From 2018 onwards, Canada’s government has denounced Nicaragua in international forums as a repressive dictatorship and followed the US authorities in imposing illegal unilateral coercive economic measures damaging Nicaragua’s people. In fact, between April and July 2018, opposition militants in Nicaragua killed over 20 police officers with 400 officers suffering gunshot wounds. Mobs of opposition militants and hired thugs set fire to public buildings, businesses and private homes.
They operated roadblocks and barricades demanding money to allow people to pass, searching and often stealing people’s personal effects, assaulting government supporters, subjecting women and girls to sexual abuse. The roadblocks were used as bases from which opposition thugs marauded and terrorized local people.
They were the front line of an explicit, extremely violent opposition campaign aimed at overthrowing Nicaragua’s elected government. Despite that extremely violent context, Nicaragua’s government agreed to opposition demands to withdraw police from the streets as a condition to start talks to end the crisis.
Only after all efforts at a negotiated settlement of the crisis failed and in response to popular outcry against the widespread serious crimes provoked by the opposition’s terror campaign, did Nicaragua’s government deploy its security forces to clear the roadblocks which they achieved successfully with minimum loss of life. The individuals responsible for those crimes sought to provoke another crisis around last year’s elections. They are now in jail.
Currently, Prime Minister Trudeau is deploying Canada’s security forces to try and suppress demonstrably peaceful protests defending fundamental freedoms which in no way pose any kind of violent threat to Canada’s elected government. Canada is now the scene of the most internationally well known expression of popular resistance to North American and European government attacks on fundamental rights, on children, on working class people and on the millions of people who depend on small businesses. The Canadian authorities, fronted by Prime Minister Trudeau, and supported by Canada’s State and corporate media, allege that the protests led by truckers pose an extreme right wing minority challenge to the government and a major threat to public health because they are resisting vaccine mandates and other repressive measures.
Canada 2022. Truckers protesting peacefully in Ottawa with broad-based support across the country
In reality, the protests and the blockades they involve are overwhelmingly peaceful and supported by people from across Canada’s political spectrum. People in Canada are now experiencing for themselves domestically the cynical deceit and gross hypocrisy their country’s government has deployed consistently in foreign affairs affecting tens of millions of people in countries from Ukraine, Iran and Syria to Haiti, Venezuela and Nicaragua. But that is not the only stark contrast with the Canadian government’s policies in the context brought about by the authorities’ response to Covid-19.
Nicaragua introduced preventive measures against Covid-19 starting in early February 2020. The authorities started health controls at the country’s borders and airport, identifying people possibly infected with the virus, encouraging voluntary quarantine with close medical supervision and careful contact tracing. The health ministry trained specialist staff, set aside 19 hospitals across the country to treat patients affected by the virus and activated a massive, nationwide education and monitoring campaign involving over 30,000 community health promoters. The health ministry devised effective prophylactic treatment for people with symptoms of the virus and issued effective guidance for the protection of the elderly and patients with chronic illness.
Once the pseudo-vaccines that prevent neither infection nor transmission became available thanks to donations from India, Russia and other countries, the Nicaraguan authorities initiated a staged voluntary campaign for those who wanted to receive the injections. Following UNESCO guidance, Nicaragua did not close its public schools nor did the government apply restrictions to the country’s economic activity. Wearing masks is still required for now in public offices, on some public transport, at some public events and in many business premises, but has never been obligatory for people generally. The introduction and application of these policies addressing Covid-19 in Nicaragua have been much more humane and democratic than those imposed in North America, Europe and most of Latin America.
In addition to needing to address genuine public health concerns while defending their people’s overall well being, Nicaragua’s authorities also faced corporate driven pressure to conform from the Bill Gates dominated World Health Organization and Western governments and from domestic opposition fear campaigns trying to cause widespread panic among the country’s population, as they did in 2018. Despite those pressures, impoverished Nicaragua has been probably the most successful country in the Americas addressing the public health problems caused by Covid-19 in a genuinely democratic way.
By contrast, like practically all the governments of the supposedly democratic Western countries, Prime Minister Trudeau’s government has applied restrictive measures damaging people’s economic well being. The education authorities applied measures ruining children’s education and seriously damaging their emotional development. The health authorities imposed mandatory pseudo-vaccination, as well as inflicting relatively very high levels of serious adverse reactions in comparison with genuine vaccine treatments for other diseases.
Compared to Nicaragua, Canada and all its fellow wealthy OECD member countries have failed abysmally in terms of both public health and democratic governance. In terms of public health, Canada failed to protect people vulnerable to the virus, generally failed to offer effective, timely treatment to those sick with the virus, and failed to protect either the overall economic well-being of its population or the well-being of the country’s children. In terms of democratic governance, the Canadian authorities have sought to suppress and censor dissent. The pseudo-vaccine mandates have caused extreme distress to hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of people, especially workers, who reject them with good reason.
Western governments in general have failed to protect the vulnerable, grossly mismanaging care for the elderly in particular. They failed to offer readily available, timely treatment and care to people sick with the virus, trashing and smearing highly respected doctors advocating cheap and effective drugs for early treatment of symptoms. They failed to introduce rational preventive measures protecting their peoples’ overall well being. Now Canada’s authorities are mobilizing security forces so as to repress widespread peaceful protests resulting directly from their public health failures, their anti-democratic economic measures and their assault on the basic rights of children. The classic fascist union of corporate and State power across North America and Europe has never been more clear.
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This article was originally published on Tortilla con Sal.
Stephen Sefton, renowned author and political analyst based in northern Nicaragua, is actively involved in community development work focussing on education and health care. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).
Featured image: Nicaragua 2018 – police officer Gabriel de Jesús Vado Ruiz, tortured, murdered and set on fire by opposition thugs in Masaya in 2018 (Photo from opposition social media video)
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