NICARAGUA: A series of blackouts by privatised electricity companies may help former Sandinista president win the Nicaraguan election, writes Hector Tobar in Managua
Every afternoon in this sweltering tropical city, the air conditioners and the fans stop working. Computer screens go dark.
Children never see the end of their favourite cartoons, and people like Juan Palacio wish they had bought surge protectors.
"We lost a refrigerator once when the electricity came back on," said Mr Palacio (28), on a day when the power was out in his middle-class neighbourhood for four hours.
"You never really know how long the light will be out, or when it will come back on."
A decade after Nicaragua privatised much of its electricity business, the country has been suffering through a series of blackouts this year that leaves most homes without power for several hours every day.
The visitor who arrives in Managua at night discovers a city where many neighbourhoods have been plunged into darkness, the headlights of passing cars providing the only illumination. During the day, scattered outages knock out the traffic lights.
The electricity companies blame government-imposed low rates and high oil prices, which have increased the cost of generating electricity.
Consumer groups counter that local power producers are conspiring to manipulate the electricity market - an alleged scheme similar to the one linked to Enron in California in 2000 and 2001.
The issue might help former Sandinista president Daniel Ortega to win the country's presidential election on November 5th. Mr Ortega has linked the crisis to the privatisation of the electricity sector by right-wing governments.
"When the power goes out, so does the water system," said Gonzalo Salgado of Nicaragua's National Consumer Defence Network. Making the problem worse, he said, the country's main distributor of electricity, the Spanish company Union Fenosa, declines to provide the public with a schedule of blackouts, as required by law.
"The problem here is that the system of regulation has completely broken down," Mr Salgado said.
Nicaragua's electricity regulators have levied stiff fines against Union Fenosa, charging the company with failing to keep adequate records and poor maintenance of its lines. Jorge Katin, a spokesman for Union Fenosa, said this month that the fines were politically motivated ahead of the elections and amounted to "reprisals" against the company.
"All of these fines and sanctions make it clear that there are interests that are trying to hit hard the [ electricity] sector and make it collapse," Mr Katin said in a statement.
A report by the Nicaraguan Energy Institute, the country's top regulatory body, found this year that the blackouts were caused by many factors, including a shortage of fuel oil, a decrease in hydroelectric power caused by a drought and a series of technical problems at several plants.
The study showed that although demand for electricity remained relatively constant during the first six months of this year at about 450 megawatts, the capacity of the country's power generators dropped steadily, from 518 megawatts in January to 373 megawatts in June.
Mr Salgado and others argue that the drop in generating capacity of the country's power producers is linked to a decision last year by the Nicaraguan Energy Institute to place new controls on the prices that producers charge in the "spot market", in which producers sell electricity to distributor Union Fenosa at hours of peak demand.
"The blackouts are a form of blackmail," Mr Salgado said. The real purpose, he said, was to put pressure on the government to relax the price controls.
Early last week, Nicaragua's national assembly voted to eliminate the controls.
Consumer complaints against the electricity companies have tripled in recent months, according to the energy institute.
"After a while, the food starts to spoil, and it's hard on my mother-in-law when there's no air conditioning," said Managua resident Rosa Maria Martinez, describing a series of outages. "Things worked better when the government ran the electric company."
Tapping into such sentiment, leftist candidate Daniel Ortega has made attacks against Union Fenosa a centrepiece of his campaign speeches.
He has suggested that, if elected, he will terminate the contract of the distributor and nationalise at least part of the utility.
"You, brothers, are suffering the effects of these outages every day," Mr Ortega said at a recent campaign appearance.
"Who brought Union Fenosa to this country? The government of the rich did, those who are in the service of barbarian capitalism." - (LA Times/Washington Post service)