The frustrations of being governor

Real power must wait for an efficient bureaucracy and a strong tax base

By Roger Hamilton, Bluefields, Nicaragua

Randolph Hodgson sits in a big office in a long whitewashed building on a hill overlooking a park. Further below lies the scruffy but vibrant business district of Bluefields, and beyond that, the Caribbean.

Hodgson is the governor of Nicaragua's South Atlantic Autonomous Region (RAAS, after its name in Spanish), an enormous territory nearly a quarter the size of the entire country. It should be a powerful position, but Hodgson has little reason to rest on his laurels. His constituents are burdened by growing poverty, 50 percent unemployment, drug abuse, deficient education, insufficient health facilities, and limited business opportunities. And then there is the fact that Hodgson lacks the real power required to make changes.

Historically, the Atlantic Coast has been a stepchild to the larger Nicaragua. The central government made all the important decisions and took most of the resources, while local communities languished. This is now starting to change thanks to recent laws giving more authority to the region's governments. A new IDB-funded program aims to upgrade the technical capacity of regional and local governments to enable them to manage their affairs.

But while the Atlantic Coast now enjoys a certain degree of political and administrative autonomy, Hodgson says that financial autonomy is still far-off on the horizon.

The most pressing need is funding for social programs. "We must depend on nongovernmental organizations—great numbers of them—to provide social services," he said. Churches also help, he added. But the RAAS and its municipalities have very limited resources.

The key to raising the money for social spending is greater control over the region's natural resources. While the RAAS must approve concessions for resource extraction, it lacks the specialized agencies needed to administer the concessions. In the case of fisheries, for example, the central government ministry does not even have an extension office here.

"On the one hand, they give us the authority to grant the concessions, but on the other hand, the real power to control the natural resources remains centralized in Managua. This is completely contradictory," said Hodgson. "We have to decentralize not only political authority, but also the technical and financial resources that regional governments need to take on these responsibilities and generate the money needed to reduce poverty."

Like many others on the Atlantic Coast, Hodgson sees a historic pattern of discrimination as a large part of the problem. "In Managua, they always say that we in the Atlantic Coast do not have the ability to manage our own affairs. But the central government has not done anything to help the Atlantic Coast improve these abilities. All the help goes to the municipalities on the Pacific."

Take the matter of central government-sponsored development plans. Since the 1950s and 1960s, he said, they have spawned programs to boost the cattle industry, coffee production, agroindustry, and sugar growing–all on the Pacific. But they ignored the needs of the Atlantic. "We have been very isolated, and every day we have become poorer and poorer," Hodgson said.

In 1998, the year he became governor, Hodgson and a group of others asked permission to participate in an IDB programming mission. "We were given a tiny amount of time–five minutes. We made our presentation. The IDB responded very positively, and with the support of the economy minister it was decided that within three months, the IDB would send another mission. It would go to the Atlantic Coast, not to Managua." Out of this mission came the new IDB-funded program.

Now Hodgson is looking forward to the arrival of consultants to help plan how to create a tax base and improve financial management and administration. Then he will be able to show that the people of the Atlantic Coast really do have the ability to manage their own affairs and plan for a better future.

Date posted: May 2001