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The Challenges for Radio Ya and Radio Corporación
by Cristiana Chamorro Barrios

Cristiana Chamorro is president of the Chamorro Foundation

The combative radio stations of Nicaragua, Radio Ya and Radio Corporación, symbols of the political and ideological polarization of the 80’s, were not able to escape the effects of the political pact negotiated in 1999 between President Arnoldo Alemán and the Sandinista Front of Daniel Ortega.

The two major parties in the National Assembly reshaped electoral law and the Constitution for the sole purpose of splitting the power in the several institutions of the State among themselves, insuring the immunity of their leaders, and, among other abuses of power, excluding the participation of other political forces in upcoming municipal and presidential elections.

As a result of that agreement, the laws and institutions of Nicaragua have bowed to the whims of Alemán and Ortega in an accelerating, self-destructive process which has seen government structures, democracy and the whole institutional basis of the country, including some communications media, place themselves at the service of the Liberal-Sandinista pact.

In this context, Radio Ya and Radio Corporación, extremist expressions of Sandinismo and of the present government respectively, have been coopted by this new bipartisan political regime based on coercion and on the build-up of all manner of dependencies toward Alemán and Ortega. Both radio stations have been put to work for what we in Nicaragua commonly call “the brute force of the pact.”

The recent history of Radio Ya is perhaps a good example to illustrate the meaning of that political expression. When its director, Carlos Guadamuz, tried to challenge the political agreement between his boss, Daniel Ortega, and Alemán, Radio Ya was immediately taken over by the workers with the protection of the police and of the President.

Ortega sued the station’s director, his former comrade-at-arms, who used to be called by his adversaries the “spokesman of the Orteguista terror.” The director of Radio Ya was defeated in his rebellion against the Alemán-Ortega pact and on December 22, 1999, was ejected from the station in a scandalous manner, with mobs in attendance, as in the past, and finally purged from the Sandinista party, as in the ancient Communist regimes.

Eventually, Radio Ya, a product of the “piñata” or distribution of Sandinista properties in 1990, reverted to serving the interests of its owner Daniel Ortega. The station was originally founded as the official voice of the Sandinista Party in 1990, when the Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional (FSLN) lost the elections to Violeta Barrios de Chamorro. During the period of transition previous to the formal tranfer of power, the Sandinistas established the station with appropriated equipment that had recently been donated to Nicaragua by the governments of Hungary and Czechoslovakia.

Initially, it was established as a company with its stock distributed among Carlos Guadamuz and four straw men loyal to the Sandinista Party. In 1994, the station underwent its first leadership crisis after the disintegration of the National Directorate of the FSLN and the breakup of the party. The putative owners took sides in the conflict and the board of directors disintegrated, with the result that the station became a partnership between Guadamuz and some members of his family.

This last was dissolved by Ortega at the time of the takeover of the station last year. At present, Ya is owned by a company named Atarrya, which stands for Association of the Workers of Radio Ya. Supposedly 49 percent of the stock belongs to the employees and the remaining 51 percent to the Sandinista Front Party, of which Ortega is the leader.

During this last partisan squabble, Radio Ya lost 18 percent of its audience, although it still holds first place in the AM band. What’s interesting is that the 18 percent lost by Radio Ya did not accrue to the benefit of Radio Corporación, but rather was automatically divided among various stations that emerged during the 90’s with an independent profile, even if in survival mode, against the two rival giants.

Radio Corporación in its golden era was the standard bearer for anti-Sandinismo and anti-Communism, but it could not profit from the partisan conflict at Ya due to its dependence on the government and on the Liberal Party. It is now a station basking on the glories of a past that hasn’t existed in Nicaragua in ten years. It does not have new offerings in information or in entertainment, but only in editorial, ideological and political opinion in domestic and international affairs.

Also, the family links between its owner and the President have led people to perceive the station as more official than the government station itself. Finally it has the added problem that almost all its journalists are employees of the government and depend on state advertising revenue which Alemán uses blatantly to reward and punish the freedom of expression conquered ten years ago in the period of Violeta Chamorro.

Radio industry analysts think that Radio Corporación will disappear if it doesn’t change its programming and if the Liberals lose the elections in 2001.

Radio Ya, in spite of its status as an instrument of the Sandinista Party, maintains its first place with timely and newsworthy programming. If allows permanent space for a public forum, with an open mike to the citizens who feel themselves heard in a medium that immediately makes them the protagonists of the news and that seeks answers, serving as policeman, judge, regulator of water and electric rates, and rendering other services that the population look for in the communications media.

At present, Radio Ya is one of the principal sources of information for the newspapers and TV stations. According to the news editors of most important media, they monitor Ya all day because it seems to be everywhere.

The station has a net of volunteers in the sorts of places that can be relied upon to yield information. It doesn’t call them correspondents, but “news hunters.” They are not journalism students; they are orderlies in hospitals, litigants in courtrooms, the vendor in the market who reports on the event as it happens, or a friend who provides details of a meeting as if the audience were present.

In Nicaragua, Radio Ya is still a radio phenomenon with a loyal and captive Sandinista audience. It is also an important reference to know what is happening anywhere in the country. Yet the revolution in the radio dial threatens its primacy, already disputed by several radio stations that emerged in the FM band after 1990.

In FM, the new stations have come with new information schemes, innovative formats, fresh editorial points of view and, of course, more possibilities for entertainment. As much as 75 percent of the Nicaraguan population is under the age of 35 and has a changing view of life. They look for services and advice for everyday life and they believe in listening to music. If anyone talks to them for more than five minutes about something irrelevant to them, they tune to the competition, which is no longer between Radio Ya and Radio Corporación.

As ideologies are left behind and more people are disillusioned by politics, captive audiences will grow ever smaller. No broadcaster in Nicaragua, not even Radio Ya, can feel secure of its standing in the market if it doesn’t move forward in rhythm with the audience and its changing habits of consumption. It is possible that in the near future Radio Ya and Radio Corporación will only be historical footnotes of an era in which they managed to rise to the occasion but which they couldn’t transcend with the advent of democracy.

Cristiana Chamorro Barrios is the daughter of assassinated publisher Pedro Joaquín Chamorro and of the ex- President of Nicaragua, Violeta Barrios de Chamorro.