Three Nicaraguan Communist Parties Squabbling With Sandinistas, Call Them Soft on Capitalism

Three Nicaraguan Communist parties are squabbling with the leftist Sandinista government and accuse it of being authoritarian, unproletarian and soft on capitalism.

The criticism from the Marxist-Leninist left has become increasingly strident in recent months. While critics on the right charge that the Sandinistas are going Communist, the essential complaint on the left is that they are not.

“The rift has reached a climate--we wouldn’t say of rupture--but of some hostility,” said Domingo Sanchez Salgado of the Nicaraguan Socialist Party.

‘Petit Bourgeois Forces’

The Socialists are Nicaragua’s oldest Communist organization, and Sanchez Salgado, 69, is its grand old man. In an interview, he scored the Sandinistas for surrounding themselves with “bourgeois and petit bourgeois forces.”

The bourgeoisie, of course, is the traditional capitalist-class enemy of the proletarian Marxist.

“There are very few elements of the working class in the government,” Sanchez Salgado said. As a result, he argued, the Sandinistas and their revolution “are losing their way. . . . They are not advancing toward socialist transformations.”

Sanchez Salgado also portrayed the ruling Sandinista Front as authoritarian and intolerant.

‘No Right to Dissent’

“As far as the Sandinistas are concerned, there is no right to dissent,” he said. “If you oppose what they say, you are a counterrevolutionary.”

The Socialist Party is one of three avowedly Marxist-Leninist parties represented in the National Assembly, which was elected in November, 1984. The other two are the Nicaraguan Communist Party and the Marxist Leninist Popular Action Movement, known by the Spanish initials MAP-ML.

The Communist Party is a splinter of the Soviet-line Socialists, and the MAP-ML is a more radical party that scornfully labels the other two “revisionist.”

All three backed the Sandinistas when they took power in a 1979 guerrilla war against the right-wing regime of Gen. Anastasio Somoza. But troubles soon began.

Ties With Sandinistas

The Soviet Communist Party established close relations with the Sandinistas, jilting the long-faithful Socialists. That hurt, said Socialist leader Sanchez Salgado.

“It caused us damage, and it still causes us damage, political damage,” he said.

More directly damaged was the radical MAP-ML. The Sandinista government arrested dozens of that party’s leaders in 1979 and 1980, holding some for up to six months.

Fernando Malespin, a member of the MAP-ML Central Committee, was in jail for three months. Today, he expresses disdain for the Sandinistas.

“This is a government of alliance with the petit bourgeoisie and the bourgeoisie,” Malespin said. “The bourgeoisie is increasingly gaining the level of political and economic power that it had before the war.”

‘Most Democratic Form’

Malespin said his party favors a dictatorship of the proletariat, “the most democratic form (of government) for the workers.”

Despite that preference, Malespin’s party took part in last year’s Western-style elections. The MAP-ML, the Socialist and the Communist parties each won less than 2% of the vote, compared to nearly 67% for the Sandinistas.

Before the elections, the Socialists were allied with the Sandinistas in a “Patriotic Front of the Revolution.” The Sandinistas broke the alliance before the election campaign.

Eli Altamirano, secretary general of the Communist Party, said in an interview that the elections were fraudulent.

“Of course they were,” he said. “The computations at the polling places were 100% manipulated by the Sandinista Front.”

2 Assembly Seats Each

The MAP-ML, the Socialist and the Communist parties each have two seats in the 96-member National Assembly. The Sandinistas have 63 assembly members, and the other seats are held by parties further to the right.

Now that the assembly is drafting a new constitution, minority parties--both Marxist and non-Marxist--are protesting that popular participation in the drafting process is hampered by a government decree that suspends several civil liberties.

The decree, issued in October, broadened an official state of emergency first declared in 1982. The new decree came amid a rash of labor agitation that was encouraged by Marxist-led unions.

New Cause for Complaint

Since then, the government has called in dozens of church, political and labor leaders--including many Marxists--to warn them against making trouble. Communist Altamirano said the state of emergency “feeds the counterrevolution” by giving it new cause for complaint.

Socialist Sanchez Salgado said the rift between his party and the Sandinistas “has become harsher and deeper because of the state of emergency.”

But Filiberto Sarria, secretary general of the non-Marxist Social Christian Party, predicted that differences between the Communist parties and the Sandinistas eventually will disappear.

“The big difference they have with the Sandinista Front is that the front holds power and they don’t,” Sarria said. “The time will come when they will need to unite, and so they will overlook their differences and unite. It’s only logical. The front is Marxist and so are they.”