God Kept in Nicaragua Charter : Sandinistas Compromise Somewhat to Win Approval

When the first drafts of Nicaragua’s new constitution surfaced for public debate, critics of the ruling Sandinista National Liberation Front were quick to notice that God was missing.

Indignation echoed in the National Assembly as the regime--a hybrid of atheists, nationalists and Marxist Christians--came under pressure to invoke his name.

In the third draft, the one that becomes the law of the land today in this predominantly Roman Catholic country, God has found a place in the constitution’s preamble--right after Augusto Cesar Sandino, Carlos Fonseca and other heroes and martyrs of the Sandinista struggle against imperialists.

A Sort of Liberation Theology

Not everyone is satisfied. God is not invoked but mentioned in passing, in what amounts to an enshrinement of liberation theology. The charter, its preamble says, is promulgated “in the name of Christians who by their faith in God have committed themselves to the liberation of the oppressed.”

The episode--like so much else in the long, divisive constitutional debate--reflected the Sandinistas’ willingness, perhaps more than in any other Marxist-inspired regime, to adopt the trappings and values of a Western democracy.

But the awkwardness of the compromise also pointed up the difficulties that the Sandinistas face as they try to accommodate their convictions to other ideologies within such a parliamentary system, from the Communist left to the moderate right.

In a campaign to win broad approval for the 202 constitutional articles, the ruling party suffered a partial setback. Fourteen of the 35 opposition assemblymen refused to ratify the charter and are boycotting today’s ceremony that will put it into effect. The Sandinistas control the assembly with 61 of its 96 seats.

Voting, Town Meetings

Since taking power in an armed uprising that toppled dictator Anastasio Somoza in 1979, the Sandinistas have offered a degree of popular participation. In 1984 they held, and won, elections of a president and the legislative assembly. Last year they invited thousands of citizens to express their views at 73 town meetings so the constitution could be called the first democratic one in Nicaragua’s undemocratic history.

In doing so, they have tried to soften their authoritarian image in Western Europe, Latin America and the United States. They have simultaneously sought to shore up vital economic aid as well as opposition to the Reagan Administration’s sponsorship of anti-Sandinista contras in the five-year-old Nicaraguan guerrilla war.

President Alan Garcia of Peru has hailed the constitution and pledged to attend today’s ceremony here in Managua. He will be the first democratically elected Western head of state to visit Nicaragua in more than a year.

Controlled Process

However, Nicaraguan opposition leaders, even those who signed the charter, complain that its gestation was controlled by the Sandinistas to exclude any proposal that defied their doctrine or threatened their power.

“The Sandinistas have great intelligence to put on this disguise for people in the world who do not understand our history,” said Emilio Alvarez, a conservative political analyst. “We have a long tradition of dictatorships. We have had the most beautiful constitutions, but none was worth a thing.”

This constitution, Nicaragua’s 17th since 1938, is committed to principles of political pluralism, a mixed economy and nonalignment in international affairs. It guarantees such rights as private property, free speech, freedom of assembly and the right to strike.

Throughout the assembly debate over the document, the Sandinistas made some concessions. They agreed to municipal elections in 1987, gave the assembly veto power over the budget in peacetime, expanded the rights of accused prisoners and abolished the president’s power to revoke citizenship.

State of Emergency

But on three proposals that struck at the core of the Sandinistas’ power, they did not yield.

Virgilio Godoy, the most prominent anti-Sandinista in the assembly, led the opposition to the charter on the grounds that it could not be freely debated as long as a sweeping state-of-emergency law, suspending most civil rights and banning all dissident news media, was in effect.

The government refused to lift the state of emergency--which it imposed in October, 1985, to help fight the contras. Six of the nine assemblymen in Godoy’s Liberal Independent Party abandoned the debate and now talk of quitting the assembly.

Other lawmakers called for a ban on presidential succession, an emotional cause in a country that was under Somoza family reign for 42 years. But the party refused to rule out another six-year term for President Daniel Ortega.

There was also a campaign, led by the Democratic Conservative Party, to remove the army from the ruling party’s control by banning partisan propaganda within the ranks and opening the officer corps to those holding other political beliefs.

Some Refused to Sign

The Sandinistas agreed to a semantic change making the army “national in character,” but six of the 14 Democratic Conservative lawmakers nevertheless refused to sign the constitution.

On the left, the charter was rejected by the Marxist-Leninist Popular Action Movement for failing to ensure political control by the working classes.

The left-leaning Popular Social Christian Party, with six Assembly seats, and the Communists and Socialists, with two seats apiece, joined the Sandinistas in signing the constitution.

To help win ratification, the government promised to free some of the Liberal Independent Party’s 203 jailed activists and did pardon six Popular Social Christians who had been in prison for dissent. Opposition lawmakers who signed the constitution suddenly found time on the Sandinista-controlled television network to air their views.

‘Hard-Line Elements’

Some opposition leaders said they were warned by Rafael Solis, the Sandinista secretary of the National Assembly, that “hard-line elements” in the ruling party stood to gain if the charter failed to get opposition backing.

Indeed, the powerful interior minister, Tomas Borge, has made little secret of his discomfort with political pluralism, declaring in a published interview this week that “we have to accept it like the Norwegians accept the cold.”

“Maybe at first there was the intention of a one-party state, but this would be more difficult now,” said Solis, who generally favors greater tolerance of dissent. “Our system is coming more to resemble Mexico’s than Cuba’s, and I would say that some opposition parties here are stronger than in Mexico. We cannot deny this reality and try to exclude them.”

“We have a commitment to those parties that are with us to open up the system to more participation,” Solis said in an interview Thursday.

Litmus Test of Diversity

A major test will come soon. When the new constitution takes effect, the state of emergency is automatically lifted and will have to be decreed anew if the government, as is expected, intends to maintain press censorship, a ban on strikes, and police powers that enable it to continue holding about 2,500 dissidents without charge.

Four opposition parties in the Assembly, which must ratify emergency measures, urged the government Thursday to reimpose them only in rural areas touched directly by the war. Otherwise, some party leaders said, they might turn against the system by boycotting municipal elections.

“The Sandinistas obviously need some emergency measures,” a senior Western observer here said. “They have a constitution that is a massive advertisement for democratic pluralists. The question now is what they will do to be able to live with it.”