President Violeta Chamorro completed a tough first month in office Friday, beset by problems ranging from labor disputes to disarmament talks with the Contra rebels.
But the approval of a long-delayed $300 million aid package by the U.S. Congress Thursday gave Chamorro and other Nicaraguans a ray of hope, said Cardinal Miguel Obando y Bravo, the country's highly respected Catholic primate."It is not going to solve all our problems, but if it arrives it must benefit all Nicaraguans," Obando y Bravo said of the aid package sought by President Bush to aid Chamorro's new Nicaraguan government. "This has been a very difficult month."
Chamorro, whose April 25 inauguration ended more than 10 years of leftist Sandinista rule, has made few public appearances, and diplomats and government sources say she has left most of the policymaking to her top aides.
Nonetheless, her motherly image and popular appeal have been a stabilizing factor in a country wracked by instability.
On May 16, Chamorro helped negotiate an end to a crippling five-day strike that virtually shut down most government industries. She mostly stayed out of the nuts and bolts of the labor issues, but observers said her presence at the negotiations on the final day helped coax both sides into resolving their differences.
"If we have had one main obstacle in the first month, it has been the strike that a small faction of workers mounted against the peace and stability of the country," said Central Bank President Francisco Mayorga, Chamorro's chief financial planner.
The strike was supported by some 400,000 Sandinista workers throughout the country.
"The government cannot get anything done without the cooperation of the Sandinistas, and the Sandinistas cannot oppose completely the position of the government because it is not good for international opinion," one Western diplomat said.
Though the Sandinistas have made life tough on Chamorro, the transition has so far been peaceful from Sandinista president Daniel Ortega to her U.S.-backed democratic government.
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Army accused of killing 114
Contra rebels broke off disarmament talks Friday, accusing the Sandinista-dominated army of killing 14 disarmed guerrillas and 100 civilians in northern Nicaragua. The conservative government of Violeta Barrios de Chamorro, which succeeded the leftist Sandinista administration a month ago but left Sandinistas in charge of the military, promised to look into the report.