Text: Juan David Latorre. Photos: Embassy of Nicaragua.
The Town Hall of Rivas hosted last Monday the celebration organised by the Embassy of Nicaragua on the occasion of its National Day and the 42nd anniversary of the Sandinista Revolution.
In the presence of the ambassadors of Cuba, Bolivia and Greece, and the Chargé d’Affaires of the Venezuelan legation, Ambassador Carlos Midence began his speech by saying that: “We are arriving at 42 years of our Revolution, 42 years of resistance and advances, of political maturity, of tangible achievements, of democratic consolidation and strengthening of the principles and values that have guided it, since Sandino conceived it, germinated it in the first third of the 20th century, in the mountains of the Nicaraguan Segovia, defending sovereignty and National Dignity in the face of imperial/colonial aggression, perpetrated by the United States, in its eternal and merciless eagerness to try to subjugate and plunder our countries.”
“Likewise,” continued the Nicaraguan ambassador, “we can mention the remarkable results of Sandinista policy at the social level. Reduction of poverty and extreme poverty, food and energy self-sufficiency with more than 75% of energy coming from renewable sources, exponential increase in urban drinking water coverage from 65% in 2007 to 91.5% in 2020 and in rural water from 26.7% to 55.4%. Likewise, in sanitary sewerage we have increased from 33% to 54%, in free health care we have built the largest hospital network in Central America, which involves the construction, expansion, improvement and equipping of 70 hospitals, 1,259 medical posts, 192 medical centres, 192 health centres, and a total of 1,000 health centres. 259 medical posts, 192 health centres, 178 maternity homes and a Molecular Biology Laboratory, the second most advanced in the region, according to WHO parameters, free education with high quality standards up to postgraduate level with teaching materials and school snacks for students, a flexible pension system with entry at the age of 60, an exponential increase in exports and a reduction in imports.”
“This is the Sandinista socio-economic model, which is based on the fight against poverty and inequality, founded on a social, humane and just economy. A paradigm at the service of the common good, whose objective is to achieve a better world by identifying institutions and policies that favour the general interest. A new paradigm of incentivisation, protection, distribution and redistribution based on human dignity, solidarity, cooperation, ecological commitment and respect for differences.”
“Nicaragua, concluded Carlos Midence, on the basis of joint efforts, has strengthened its democracy, understood as the institutional, social, economic, and total strengthening of citizens’ rights, the promotion of principles of trust and harmony, and not simply deployed as an ideology, as a narrative that can be arbitrarily attributed and used to attack other countries. This is why gender parity rankings place the country at the top of the rankings, behind only four Scandinavian countries. Similarly, rights such as free expression, organisation, etc., are not only respected, but there is such permissiveness that so-called ‘independent journalists’ even try to invent parallel realities which, when they collide with pure reality, just like the international media, remain silent.”
