MANAGUA — “Every pig has its Saturday” is a popular Nicaraguan saying, which refers to slaughter of fattened pigs on Saturdays for the weekend cooking pot. For former right-wing president Arnoldo Aleman, Saturday seems to have come.

On September 19, Nicaragua's attorney-general filed corruption charges against Aleman and 13 members of his family.

Aleman is a one-time egg vendor who helped found the Constitutionalist Liberal Party (PLC) in the 1980s. He refused an offer to run as an MP in the 1990 elections opting instead to contest the mayoralty of the capital. “First mayor, then president”, he boasted.

In February 1990, the right-wing National Opposition Union (UNO) coalition won a surprising electoral victory over the radical left-wing Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) government and Aleman became mayor of Managua. Controlling the resources of a large city, the egg salesman started to become inexplicably wealthy.

With the strong backing of the US government and the Catholic Church, Aleman defeated the FSLN's Daniel Ortega in the 1996 presidential election and started to amass a US$500 million fortune.

Last year, with his term ending, he boasted that he would return to the presidency in 2006 after a stint as leader of the parliament. Aleman anointed his servile vice-president, Enrique Bolanos, as the PLC's presidential candidate to keep the seat warm for him.

After Bolanos defeated Ortega in the November elections, the PLC won a majority of seats in the National Assembly and Aleman became the assembly's president. With parliamentary immunity apparently assured he then carried on as if he were still in the top job.

But Bolanos had other ideas, and launched an anti-corruption campaign with Aleman as its central target.

In his haste to plunder state assets, especially when it looked like the FSLN might win the election, Aleman had for once left his tracks uncovered. Bolanos's auditors discovered a paper trail leading to more than $100 million of stolen state assets in foreign bank accounts linked to Aleman, his immediate family and close cronies.

Such revelations, coming at the same time as the babies of unemployed farm workers were dying in the northern region of Matagalpa, spurred public revulsion. The National Conscience Movement quickly gathered more than half a million signatures demanding Aleman's prosecution.

This helped Bolanos to apply pressure on MPs still loyal to Aleman. With the support of the FSLN's 38 deputies, Bolanos was able to muster enough support among PLC MPs to strip Aleman of his parliamentary immunity.

From Green Left Weekly, October 2, 2002.
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