Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, March 8, 1990 TAG: 9003082047
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A/4 EDITION: EVENINGG
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: MANAGUA, NICARAGUA LENGTH: Medium
The Sandinistas are also moving to strip the government to bare bones before the 14-party United National Opposition coalition takes office April 25.
The flurry of giveaways extends even to government office supplies.
"We're going to leave them the offices empty," said a pro-Sandinista City Hall secretary carting home a cardboard box full of blank file folders.
The secretary, who did not want her name used, said she was hoping to get an office desk for her home, another government gift.
Something else the incoming government will have to live without is Cuban military aid, although it doesn't appear to be any love lost.
President Fidel Castro of Cuba announced Wednesday in Havana that he would cut all military assistance to Nicaragua by the time Violeta Chamorro takes office, maybe even before.
Castro was quoted by Cuba's official news agency Prensa Latina as saying that Cuban aid in housing construction and health care would remain if the new government wants them.
Neither government has ever said how much aid, military or otherwise, Castro has been giving the Sandinistas during their decade in power.
In a series of increasingly defiant speeches since losing the Feb. 25 elections, President Daniel Ortega has vowed the Sandinistas will "defend the conquests of the revolution."
The list of conquests runs from the integrity of the Sandinista People's Army to a daily glass of milk given small schoolchildren.
It also includes tracts of urban land seized by the government and given to poor people, on which shantytowns have sprung up, most without running water.
In the seven weeks before Chamorro is inaugurated, the Sandinistas are trying to make confiscations legal.
But they're also leaving an empty shell of a state structure that will make it harder for UNO to function as a government.
In the north-central town of Matagalpa, UNO legal adviser Santiago Rivas said the Sandinistas are gutting state enterprises.
He said government officials are giving state property away, emptying sugar and coffee warehouses, registering state vehicles in private names or selling them off.
Although he offered no proof, Rivas said officials also are funneling public money into foreign bank accounts.
"We are going to take over a government totally in ruins," Rivas said. "We are inheriting a bankrupt government."
A bill allowing tenants to claim legal ownership of state housing was to be read before the Sandinista-dominated National Assembly today.
The bill covers more than 10,000 homes nationwide. The homes have been awarded, rented or loaned to the tenants, usually Sandinista party militants or government officials. Many of the previous owners were supporters, associates or relatives of dictator Anastasio Somoza, whom the Sandinistas overthrew.
Some homes were seized by the state through the "Law of Absence," under which Nicaraguans who leave the country for more than six months are subject to the confiscation of their property.
by CNB