In Nicaraguan political history, General Augusto Sandino remains an exception to the rule. He was the only major politician who refused to agree to the 1927 Pact of Espino Negro, a U.S.-sponsored agreement that put an end to the Constitutionalist War. His refusal to sign led to his legendary six-year war against the U.S. Marines. Today, even by his detractors, his objection to the Pact is considered patriotic. 
     Sandino wasn't around 44 years later, but he doubtless would have objected to the 1971 pact between Anastasio Somoza's ruling Liberal Party and the opposition Conservatives. In exchange for a handful of government posts, Conservative leader Fernando Aguero gave his approval to the dictatorship, but sunk his own party into decades of disgrace. Today, no one defends the Somoza-Aguero Pact. 
     In Nicaraguan history, political pacts have generally been considered cowardly affairs where politicians decided to protect their own interests rather than work for the good of the nation. The latest political pact would seem to be no exception. 
     After more than a year of backroom negotiations, and repeated denials that such secret talks were underway, Nicaragua's two largest political parties–the Partido Liberal Constitucionalista (PLC) and the Frente Sandinista de Liberacion Nacional (FSLN)–have emerged with a series of proposed constitutional changes. 
     Included are proposals that would expand the membership of the top judicial and electoral bodies and ensure that the PLC and FSLN enjoy a majority. Municipal elections will be changed to coincide with national elections. The vote necessary to win the presidential election on the first round will be lowered from 45 to 40 percent. Smaller parties will have a harder time keeping legal status, and electoral alliances will be all but outlawed. Dual citizens will be allowed to run for office, providing they renounce their foreign citizenship. Outgoing presidents will be granted a seat in the Asamblea Nacional. And the post of the feisty Comptroller General, Augustin Jarquin, will be changed to a committee of five controlled by the PLC and FSLN. 
     Proponents argue that “The Pact” will give greater governability to a nation that has been torn by violence and fragmented by political tensions. They point to former President Daniel Ortega's occasional threats to retake power by force of arms, or the fact that in a country of just four million people, 23 candidates ran for president in the 1996 campaign. 
     Yet opponents clearly outnumber the pact's defenders, arguing the agreement will undermine political pluralism and nurture impunity and corruption. 
     Eliseo Nunez, a Asamblea Nacional deputy who split from the PLC, declared that the two parties “are dividing up Nicaragua as if it were a cake.” 
     According to Carlos Chamorro, an independent journalist in Managua, the pact “represents an assault on political institutionality” where partisan interests are “imposed over the imperative of professionalizing institutions.” 
     Chamorro cites the proposal to change the date of municipal elections as a way of discouraging decentralization and weakening municipal structures. Municipal issues, he says, will be lost in the increasingly bipartisan national contest. The fight over the pact, he argues, “could be the last opportunity to keep politics from depending on political bosses–from right, left, or center–and begin to revolve around grassroots proposals to change the country.” 
     The PLC and FSLN have the votes they need to approve the pact in the Asamblea. The PLC has 42 deputies and the FSLN 36, of a total of 93. Two-thirds will be needed to approve the accords. 
     While the pact was negotiated by a team of deputies from each party, the agreement is often referred to as “The Aleman-Ortega Pact,” given that President Arnoldo Aleman of the PLC and former president Ortega of the FSLN stand to benefit personally. 
     Aleman will be granted a seat in the Asamblea once he leaves office, thus insuring continued immunity from investigations into his self-enrichment while in office and his controversial purchase of lands on the Pacific coast–and a decision to use government funds to build a road into that area. Aleman will also benefit from the silencing of Jarquin, a thorn in the side of Aleman's ample flesh who has said he will quit if the changes to the Comptroller's office are approved. (Removing Jarquin from his highly visible post will also dramatically inhibit Jarquin's desires to run for president as a candidate of a coalition of small parties.) 
     Aleman may have even bigger dreams. If the controversy over the pact leads to the convocation of a constituent assembly charged with drawing up a new constitution, something some critics of the pact have proposed, Aleman will reportedly lobby to have his presidential term extended, or be allowed to run for a consecutive term as president, something currently proscribed by the constitution. 
     Ortega believes reducing the minimum percentage to win the presidency could aid the FSLN, whose hardcore voter base has not expanded in years. 
     In addition, Ortega, currently an Asamblea deputy, has been assured that if the pact is approved, PLC deputies will not support efforts to remove his parliamentary immunity. Ortega's stepdaughter Zoilamerica Narvaez has charged the former president with sexual abuse and asked the Asamblea to allow him to face trial. 
     “Sexual abuse is not to be negotiated,” declared Dora Maria Tellez of the Movimiento Renovador Sandinista during a July 8 march in Managua against the deal. “This is a pact,” she said, “because it is simply dealing out quotas and positions of power, ignoring issues of poverty, hunger and misery facing the majority of the population.” 
     Although Tellez is no longer a member of the FSLN, her sentiments have spread within the ranks of Ortega's party. 
     “This is a capitulation,” declared Vilma Núñez, a human rights activist and FSLN leader. 
     An influential group of FSLN faithful published a critique entitled “The pact is the beginning of the end of the FSLN.” The document argued that the pact would “establish a rotation of power between the leadership of the FSLN and PLC to the exclusion of . . .organized civil society. It denies to minorities the right to express themselves, even their right to exist, and it lays the foundation for new political violence and insurrections some ten or 20 years down the road.” 
 Other critics have charged that top FSLN leaders will also benefit economically from the “political stability” that Ortega and Aleman promise will result from the pact. “What [the FSLN] is trying to 'stabilize' is the property of its new leaders-businesspeople-landowners, who for years have been conducting a voracious concentration of lands,” wrote editors of the Jesuit-sponsored monthly Envio. 
     While FSLN leaders are trying to achieve a political stability that will protect the almost 200 companies they obtained during the 1990 “Piñata,” many Liberal Party leaders are looking for a “recapitalization” of properties they lost to government confiscation following the 1979 revolution. 
     To date, critics of the agreement have made lots of noise, but failed to generate an massive movement to block the reforms. The July 8 opposition march, despite sponsorship from a plethora of organizations, drew only 2,000 people. Unless opponents can soon generate a groundswell of protest, the pact seems destined to approval in the Asamblea Nacional. 
     Despite the vocal opposition of FSLN leaders like Núñez, Ortega has managed to weather dissent within FSLN ranks. He convinced the party's ruling Asamblea Sandinista to support the pact with a 137-18 vote in early September. 
     “I wouldn't go so far as to call this a pact, because a pact results from when someone gets close to a dictator in order to benefit personally, as occurred in the past,” Ortega said. “President Aleman is a democratic president, he was elected civically and his administration is of a civilian nature. Aleman is not Somoza.” 
     The president returned the compliment. Referring to Ortega, he said, “That man has evolved enormously, he's a sensible guy.”