The FSLN’s election campaign in Nicaragua has consisted of placing giant billboards displaying images of its candidates, President Daniel Ortega and his wife Rosario Murillo. Credit: Oscar Navarrete/IPS

By José Adán Silva
MANAGUA, Nov 3 2016 (IPS)

In the midst of unusual political tension and apathy, Nicaraguans will go to the polls on Sunday Nov. 6 to vote in elections marked by the absence of the main opposition force and international election observers.

The governing Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) dominates the country’s public institutions, in alliance with the main economic powers and backed by the police and military.

The leftist FSLN is the lone major party in the elections. And this is the party’s seventh consecutive nomination of 70-year-old former Sandinista guerrilla leader President Daniel Ortega, and his third run since he won the 2006 elections with 38 percent of the vote.“There is no election spirit, people are not talking about the process, there was no debate among candidates, there are no proposals for solving the most pressing problems that the country faces, the electoral authorities have had no credibility since 2008.” -- José Dávila

The opposition argue that the modification of the constitution by the judicial and electoral authorities to allow indefinite presidential re-election was illegal.

If Ortega wins, as projected by the polls, he will govern until 2021, completing 15 consecutive years in power since taking office in 2007.

He had already governed the country between 1979 and 1990, after the FSLN revolution overthrew dictator Anastasio Somoza, the last of the Somoza dynasty. In the 1980s the country was rocked by the war waged against the government by the U.S.-armed and -financed “Contras”.

Political scientist José Antonio Peraza told IPS “we have not experienced a political situation as serious as this one” since the FSLN and Ortega lost their political and military power in the 1990 elections, following a decade of civil war.

In his view, this electoral process is not only unusual due to the electorate’s lack of interest, but also “because the political system has been structured for the elections in such a way that the only options left are the governing party and five or six small parties authorised by the electoral tribunal in view of their slim chances of winning.”

“The FSLN made sure to remove any real political options, disqualifying the chief opposition party and replacing it with a pro-government group, with unknown candidates and no proposals for change,” said Peraza.

In August, the electoral tribunal banned the Independent Liberal Party (ILP) – the main opposition party that heads a coalition against the FSLN – from participating in the elections. It also dismissed 28 liberal deputies from Nicaragua’s congress, who acted as a counterweight to the Sandinista majority.

In addition, in a move that has caused much concern that the country will end up under another dictatorship and governing dynasty, Ortega named his wife, Rosario Murillo, as his vice presidential running-mate, and placed his children in strategic public posts.

“Many adversaries to the party are calling the process an electoral farce and I honestly cannot disagree with them in disregarding this situation as illegitimate. The FSLN vetoed outside monitors from overseeing the elections and removed the main opposition parties,” said the political analyst.

Recently Ortega partially reversed its ban on outside monitors, accepting a team of observers from the Organisation of American States (OAS).

The administration also “controls the electoral structures accused of election fraud since 2008 and uses the power of the public institutions to campaign with state resources,” said Peraza.

IPS sought an opinion within the FSLN’s campaign team, but received no response to the request for an interview in over a week.

José Dávila, a political analyst and election monitoring expert, told IPS that in the more than 100 elections that he has observed and studied in different countries around the world in the last 20 years, he has not seen an election like this one.

“There is no election spirit, people are not talking about the process, there was no debate among candidates, there are no proposals for solving the most pressing problems that the country faces, the electoral authorities have had no credibility since 2008,” when the opposition and observers denounced fraud in the municipal elections.

“The campaign has only been seen in government media outlets and there has not been a single formal communication to the people about how the election is going.”

Dávila said that if he “had to compare it with other electoral processes, I would say that this election looks more like the grey processes carried out in Eastern Europe during the Cold War or the polls in Cuba, where there is no real opposition to the government party.”

International pressure

According to Dávila, there are other elements that turn the process into a “pressure cooker” similar to the atmosphere seen during the 1980s crisis.

“The United States has denounced political irregularities committed by Ortega’s government in Nicaragua and is threatening to pass a law to cut loans to the country if the aspects that Washington questions are not resolved,” said Dávila.

He was referring to the threat posed by the Nicaragua Investment Conditionality Act (NICA), which was passed unanimously Sep. 21 by the U.S. House of Representatives, and now has to make it through the Senate before being signed into law by President Barack Obama.

The initiative aims for Washington to veto any loan programme or grant for projects in this Central American country, alleging that the government in Managua violates the human and political rights of Nicaraguans.

Nicaragua, a country of 6.1 million people, 47 percent of whom are poor, depends on international aid and soft loans to sustain its economy.

A U.S. blockade would cost Nicaragua 250 million dollars annually in loans according to the World Bank, at a time when its main ally, Venezuela, is in crisis.

For similar reasons, the OAS requested a dialogue with Nicaragua to address complaints by human rights organisations, political parties and civil society institutions.

The government has accepted the proposal and an OAS commission will participate in a dialogue with government authorities, political parties, media and civil society organizations, planned for the day before elections.

“In a political maneuver, the government is attempting to legitimate its electoral process, while its adversaries will take advantage of the opportunity to show all the anomalies and institutional abuses by President Ortega’s government, and I can’t see the OAS’ current authorities endorsing a dubious electoral process like the one that is taking place in Nicaragua,” said Dávila.

Unlike other elections when political parties campaigned in public squares and toured through the main cities, this year there were just small rallies held by groups that support the government and demonstrations by the opposition to protest what they call an “electoral farce.”

Against this backdrop, six national political parties and one regional will be running in the elections for president, vice president, national deputies and representatives to the Central American Parliament, with the government urging people to participate and the opposition calling on voters to abstain, in order to make a statement on the illegitimacy of the elections.

In the polls, the FSLN has 60 percent support.

The party first emerged as a political-military movement in July 1961, to overthrow the Somoza family that governed Nicaragua since the 1930s. It seized power in 1979, following a bloody civil war that then continued until 1990.

President Daniel Ortega (standing a right) at the Sixth National Sandinista Congress, held June 4, which unanimously proclaimed him the Sandinista Party candidate for president of Nicaragua for the seventh time in a row. On the high rise building, Nicaraguan revolutionary hero Augusto César Sandino (1895-1934) is depicted in silhouette. Credit: La Voz del Sandinismo

By José Adán Silva
MANAGUA, Jun 23 2016 (IPS)

The seventh consecutive nomination of Daniel Ortega as the governing party’s candidate to the presidency in Nicaragua, and the withdrawal from the race of a large part of the opposition, alleging lack of guarantees for genuine elections, has brought about the country’s worst political crisis since the end of the civil war in 1990.

President Ortega, a 72-year-old former guerrilla fighter, has been the elected head of this Central American since 2007, and is seeking reelection in the general elections scheduled for November 6. If he wins his term of office will be extended to 2021, by which time he will have served a record breaking 19 years, longer even than that of former dictator Anastasio Somoza García whoruled the country for over 16 years.

He is standing again this year in spite of already having served two consecutive terms as president, thanks to a ruling by the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN)-controlled Supreme Court (CSJ).

The CSJ determined in 2011 that an article in the constitution banning indefinite reelection was a violation of Ortega’s right to be a candidate. Thus the highest court in the land struck down the constitutional ban against immediate reelection of serving presidents who have served out their term of office.The future situation “will depend on the opposition’s power to create instability in the electoral system, after announcing its official withdrawal from the contest.” - Humberto Meza

Ortega’s electoral hopes were further boosted on June 15, when the opposition National Coalition for Democracy (CND) was elbowed out of the race: their most promising leader, Luis Callejas, was dropped as a presidential candidate.

Earlier the Supreme Electoral Council (CSE) cancelled the legal status of the leadership of the Independent Liberation Party (PLI), the largest member of the Coalition, and handed over PLI representation instead to a political faction supportive of the FSLN.

In the view of the opposition and other domestic movements, these measures have undermined the country’s democratic institutions and cast a shadow of doubt over the validity of the elections themselves.

Social scientist Nicolás López Maltez, a member of Nicaragua’s Academy of Geography and History, said that the way Ortega has pursued his presidential aspirations is unparalleled in Central America in the past 150 years.

“He has been a candidate in seven consecutive elections since 1984. He lost in 1990, 1996 and 2001; then he won the elections in 2006, 2011 and is now an official candidate for 2016,” López Maltez told IPS.

Ortega first came to power in 1979 when FSLN guerrillas ousted the last member of the Somoza dynasty of dictators who ruled the country with an iron fist for 43 years.

He was the coordinator of the Junta of National Reconstruction, the provisional government (1979-1984) installed by the Sandinista rebels following their victory against Anastasio Somoza Junior. Ortega stood for president for the first time in 1984 in the first elections called by the Sandinistas and was elected for the five-year term 1985-1990.

He lost the 1990 elections which marked the climax of a civil war in which armed opposition to the Sandinista revolution received political and military pressure from the United States.

According to López Maltez and other analysts, Ortega has taken control of all government branches, and is therefore practically assured of victory at the ballot boxes in November.

If this happens, then by 2018 Ortega will become the longest serving president of Nicaragua, outlasting the terms in office of liberal former general José Santos Zelaya (1893-1909) and Anastasio Somoza García (1937-1947 and 1950-1956) who each served for 16 years and a few months.

The Somoza dynasty wielded absolute power in Nicaragua from 1937 to 1979. Three members of two generations of this family – or their puppet allies – perpetuated their oppressive and corrupt dictatorship for 43 years.

Pollsters agree that President Ortega enjoys wide social support and the confidence of by groups such as private business and the police and military corps.

In May, M&R Consultores published survey results indicating that 77.6 percent of respondents backed Ortega, and 63.7 percent of voters said they would cast their ballots for his socialist FSLN party.

“Over the last 15 years several Latin American presidents have overturned the myth, previously regarded as incontrovertible by political scientists, that the region’s presidents enjoy high approval levels when they enter office, but high disapproval levels when they leave,” the head of the M&R consultancy, Raúl Obregon, told IPS.

In his view, there are several reasons why Ortega is one of the exceptions to the rule.

In the first place, he said, Ortega’s prospects are enhanced by the fading of popular fears that the FSLN would cause another war if they were returned to power, a fear much played upon by the opposition in the 1990, 1996 and 2001 election campaigns.

Secondly, he said, Ortega has followed sound macroeconomic policies and this is recognised by both domestic and international organisations.

The rolling out of social projects for poverty reduction has benefited the most vulnerable members of society.

Rightwing parties governed the country between 1990 and 2007, but they have now been torn apart owing to internal conflicts, and they have lost influence among the electorate.

“They are out of touch with the problems and needs of the people. They talk politics while the population wants to hear proposals to solve their main problems, namely unemployment and lack of access to basic necessities,” Obregón emphasised.

Thirty-eight percent of Nicaragua’s 6.2 million people live in poverty, according to international organisations. The 2012 electoral register identifies 4.5 million registered voters.

Despite the picture painted by the polls, opposition politicians accuse Ortega of manipulating the laws and institutions in his favour to ensure the outcome of the election and secure his continued grasp on power.

Opposition sectors claim the results of municipal elections in 2008 and of the 2011 general elections were fraudulent. Observers from the U.S. Carter Center and from the European Union observers/ said they lacked transparency.

This year a number of civil society organisations and other institutions, including the private sector and the Roman Catholic Church, have asked Ortega for greater political openness and for international observers to monitor the elections to guarantee fair play.

But in May Ortega decided not to invite international or local electoral observers, whom he referred to as “shameless scoundrels.”

After that came the move against the PLI leadership, followed in June by the engineering of the disqualification of the candidate nominated by the CND coalition, an umbrella group for the main opposition forces.

CND leaders said they were abandoning the contest in order to avoid being involved in an “electoral farce.”

These events rang alarm bells at international organisations as well as for the secretary general of the Organisation of American States (OAS), Luis Almagro, a native of Uruguay.

Humberto Meza, who holds a doctorate in social sciences, said that Ortega’s stratagems to perpetuate himself in power “will drastically affect the legitimacy of the elections,” no matter how high his popularity rating.

The Supreme Court “is condemning a vast number of voters to non participation in the electoral process,” he told IPS.

The aftermath, in Meza’s view, “will depend on the opposition’s power to create instability in the electoral system, after announcing its official withdrawal from the contest.”

“Nicaragua is polarised. Many people are critical of but remain silence for fear of official reprisals,” he said.

Democratic institutions are fragile now to an extent not seen since 1990, Meza said.

However, “democracy has plenty of other options for self-nurture apart from the voting mechanism,” he said. “Apparently a large sector of the opposition is placing its hopes in these alternatives.”

Meza said the concern expressed by the OAS secretary general and any pressure exerted by the international community, led by the United States, were unlikely to have “much impact” on Nicaragua’s  domestic crisis.

Edited by Estrella Gutiérrez. Translated by Valerie Dee

From left to right, José Miguel Insulza, OAS Secretary General, José de Jesús Orozco, chair of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, and Emilio Álvarez Icaza, executive secretary of the IACHR. Credit: Juan Manuel Herrera, OAS/ CC by 2.0

By Carey L. Biron
WASHINGTON, Nov 1 2012 (IPS)

Representatives of nearly 40 civil society organisations from throughout the Americas gathered here on Wednesday to express concerns with proposed changes to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR).

The governments of Ecuador, Venezuela, Bolivia, Nicaragua, as well as Brazil and Peru, have increasingly been attempting to distance themselves from the diktats of the pan-regional IACHR, which since its creation in 1959 has proven to be one of the most effective parts of the often-derided system of the 35-member Organisation of American States (OAS) system.

While criticism of the IACHR from those governments culminated in particularly strong rhetoric at the OAS General Assembly in June, Venezuela took a major step when it formally announced in September that it would be leaving the inter-American system.

“It is critical to have a strong institution that fully complies with the promotion and protection of fundamental rights, and which constantly ensures that countries respect these rights. This is now being threatened,” Mauricio Alarcón, with Fundamedios, a Quito-based group focused on freedom of expression, said in Spanish-language testimony at the Washington headquarters OAS.

“There are those who say that violation of rights is a thing of the past. But of course this still exists, and today more than ever we need a strong, active system – one that thinks of victims and is not subject to the state.”

To explain its decision, the Caracas government denounced the American Convention on Human Rights, the legal underpinning for IACHR judicial proceedings, as a relic of U.S. domination. The United States is indeed a part of, and hosts, the IACHR, but it has not ratified the American Convention on Human Rights.

The Venezuela announcement was a serious strike at the vision of a universal rights system covering the Americas. U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillai immediately moved to “strongly urge” Caracas to reconsider, warning on Sep. 11 that “a vital layer of human rights protection for Venezuelans – and potentially for other Latin Americans as well – will be stripped away if this decision is carried out.”

Imperfect democracies

The withdrawal also comes as a broader attempt to “reform” the IACHR system is being pushed by Venezuela, Bolivia, Colombia and others.

In January, sensing mounting pushback, OAS Secretary-General José Miguel Insulza agreed to endorse proposals for procedural changes within the commission. Critics say these changes would make it more difficult for victims of human rights abuses to access the inter-American system, and more difficult for the IACHR to enforce its own writ.

The commission’s important documentation process would also be hindered by the proposed changes, potentially allowing member countries to hold up publication of critical reports for up to a year and eliminating a section of the IACHR annual report that highlights flagrant rights abuses.

“We are extremely concerned that the reforms process that has been put forward by the OAS political members could end up weakening the Inter-American Commission and its ability to protect human rights in this hemisphere,” Viviana Krsticevic, executive director of the Centre for Justice and International Law (CEJIL), a Washington-based organisation that recently mounted an information campaign on the inter-American reforms process, told IPS.

The IACHR “has made very significant contributions in our imperfect democracies, and we are sincerely worried that some of the proposals by the states could be very detrimental for the protection of individual rights and also for the agenda of strengthening our democratic institutions”, Krsticevic added.

So far, the IACHR has refused to follow these non-binding recommendations, leading instead to Wednesday’s hearings, part of a process that is set to stretch into the spring. But if the reforms are not enacted, Bolivia, Ecuador and Bolivia say they will follow Venezuela’s lead.

While many at Wednesday’s testimony said it is critical that the inter-American system remains pan-regional, others suggest the reforms pose a far greater danger.

“Given the commission’s record of achievement, even if more governments go the way of Venezuela, the commission is not at risk of losing its relevance in the countries that continue to participate in the inter-American system,” Lisa Reinsberg, executive director of the International Justice Resource Center (which has a wealth of related information here), told IPS.

“If the proposed reforms are imposed on the commission, however, there is a serious risk of it becoming a diminished, constrained version of itself, less able to meaningfully address the pressing human rights concerns of the day.”

Gutting the commission

The IACHR is made up of seven commissioners. As a supranational body, it is empowered to hear petitions at a court in Costa Rica when national systems are incapable or unwilling to offer justice for alleged human rights violations.

Over the past five and a half decades, the commission’s work has proven instrumental in pushing regional issues related to accountability, military jurisdiction and equality, and in documenting gross abuse.

“Systems for victims of human rights violations are just like hospitals for people who are sick – if you stop the emergency room from functioning, you would be cutting the powers of the system,” Gustavo Gallón Giraldo, with the Colombian Commission of Jurists, said at the OAS Wednesday.

“Proposals by the [OAS] member states … have to be aimed at strengthening the system. Yet this morning we’ve heard of initiatives that would do the opposite – that would weaken the system. This cannot be tolerated.”

The IACHR is expected to continue to discuss reforms-related issues for the next few weeks. According to the deadline set by the OAS General Assembly in June, full and final discussion on the process is expected by March.

And while several observers have suggested that the OAS has indeed broadened the scope of its dialogue with various stakeholders since June, anxieties persist that in-country discussions are taking place neither broadly nor openly.

“Brazilians know very little about the reforms process of such an important institution,” Alexandre de Oliveira Andrade Moraes, with the freedom of expression-focused group Article 19, told the IACHR on Wednesday. “Closed-door talks with the foreign minister…should never be considered substitution for the transparency Brazil owes its people.”

CEJIL’s Krsticevic is similarly calling for “a transparent, open discussion at the level of the political organs” in upcoming months. “This is key if we’re talking about a system that covers everybody – this can’t be only about governments.”