A proposal by Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez to create a united “Army of ALBA” to defend member states from potential hostilities from the United States or Colombia is being ridiculed by Nicaragua's opposition leaders as “crazy,” “adventurist” and – most importantly – unconstitutional.

Chávez proposed the idea Sunday afternoon during his weekly national address, “Alo Presidente.” He was accompanied by Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega, visiting Venezuela for a summit meeting of the countries belonging to the socialist cooperation agreement known as ALBA, or the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas. During the address, Chávez spoke of the need to create an Army of ALBA to defend the member nations – Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua, Bolivia and Dominica – from potential aggression from the United States.

As is the case with other ALBA initiatives, it was unclear whether the proposal to create a NATO-like military alliance was something that had been thought out in advance, or whether it was just Chávez talking off the top of his head. Regardless, Ortega agreed with the proposal and said that an attack on any member country of ALBA would be considered an attack against all countries.

Back in Nicaragua, the idea is being ridiculed as “crazy talk.”

Nicaraguan defense expert Roberto Cajina said that the creation of a common army is highly unlikely for legal reasons, as well as political and financial. Cajina said that the Constitution stipulates that the military can only be sent abroad for humanitarian purposes in times of peace, and that the National Assembly, which is controlled by the opposition, is the only competent authority to approve the deployment of Nicaraguan troops abroad or the entrance into Nicaragua of foreign troops.

Opposition lawmakers insist there is no way they would ever approve such a foolhardy plan.

Jamileth Bonilla, president of the National Assembly's Commission on Foreign Affairs, told The Nica Times yesterday that the proposal is just another example of “crazy talk” from Ortega and Chávez. She said she thinks the whole thing is a smokescreen to hide everything else that is going on under the cloak of ALBA, such as the mysterious Venezuelan aid and oil profits that no one in the Ortega administration has accounted for thus far.

Opposition leader Eduardo Montealegre, of the Nicaraguan Liberal Alliance (ALN), went a step further and said that Ortega's militaristic declarations of late could be an attempt to hide his intentions to once again reinstate the military draft – something that Ortega this week denied.

Read this Friday's Nica Times, an eight-page publication of The Tico Times, for more on the Sandinista government and National Security.