A YEAR AGO in this space I predicted that if all went well, the government of Violeta Chomorro would bring prosperity and meaningful democracy to Nicaragua.

All has not gone well.

Asked recently whether Nicaragua's economic glass was half empty or half full, the mission chief for the U.S. Agency for International Development replied: "The glass is neither half empty nor full. The glass is smashed. There is no glass."

At the time of the election, Nicaragua's per-capita income had declined from a pre-revolution level of $964 to about $300. Inflation had peaked at around 36,000 percent. Staple crops such as rice and beans, once exported, were in short supply by last year. Corporations were taxed at a flat 50 percent rate, which helped fuel a general capital flight from the country.

The factors were multiple: a decade-long civil war, a complete politicization of the economy under Sandinista rule and a U.S. economic embargo all contributed to the situation as it existed before the February 1990 triumph of Chamorro's National Opposition Union.

This is not to say that the picture was rosy in pre-revolutionary Nicaragua. Although there may have been a relatively more stable economy and a higher per-capita income, wealth was concentrated in the hands of the Somozistas and the ruling elite that backed Somoza's corrupt and repressive regime. But the ten years of Sandinista rule undeniably increased the overall poverty of the country. This was what Chamorro--in Washington this week to plead for more aid--has pledged to reverse. This is what she has failed to do.

WHY?

The UNO platform pledged to scale down the bloated, Sandinista-controlled military, limit the sphere of government, reinvigorate respect for private property, proceed apace with privatization of Sandinista-nationalized corporations, decrease the influence of Sandinista unions and give those peasants who had been working on cooperative farms title to the land.

In the past year, although some of these reforms have been carried out, Chamorro's government has stalled in its efforts. The military has been reduced from 85,000 soldiers to 38,000, but the public sector still includes 110,000 workers, an exorbitant number for a country of only 3 million. Plans for meaningful agricultural reform are proceeding slowly, although production in staple crops has increased slightly.

Sandinista unions have fought the privatization of state-owned companies and the downsizing of the public sector at every turn. They held two bloody and disruptive strikes last year and another strike last month, just after a new austerity program was announced. They have also blackmailed the government into giving them huge pay increases when the nation owes more than $360 million to international banks.

And the smaller military has been no less greedy. Last year, the government made secret payments of several million dollars a month over its official budget to the military. The military has also helped to stall privatization efforts and continues to confiscate privately-owned farms, said the president of a farm organization in a New York Times article yesterday.

Chamorro herself must bear some of the blame for the continued economic mess as well. Post-election fears about her incompetence have been realized.

The president has surrounded herself not with experienced economic experts but with members of her own extended family. A Yale-educated economist helped reduce the government's monthly deficit from $30 million to $8 million between last April and last September, but resigned last October because of conflicts with Chamorro's family, setting the stage for the descent into free spending and renewed inflation.

Because of the stalled reform plans, five digit inflation continues, although it has been "reduced" to only 12,000 percent. Although the "gold cordoba," a new currency introduced last year, began at an exchange rate pegged one-for-one with the dollar, since its introduction into general circulation in early March it has already declined to a rate of five-to-one.

The overall picture is no better. Last year, production shrank by five percent. And the unemployment rate hovers at around 40 percent.