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Caribbean & Central America - March 2011 (ISSN 1741-4458)

NICARAGUA: 'Democracy' becomes an electoral issue

The ruling Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional (FSLN) last month officially nominated President Daniel Ortega as its presidential candidate, ahead of the November 2011 vote, despite the constitutional ban on his re-election. Ortega's flagrant breach of the constitution over the re-election issue, which may be copied in Guatemala (see next page), sets a worrying precedent. Ortega's move marks a change from the previous debate on changing constitutional term limits which swept the region in recent years and was a contributing factor in the ouster of Honduras's President Manuel Zelaya in the June 2009 coup d'état. The question of democracy has consequently become the dominant electoral issue in Nicaragua. The opposition presents the choice before voters not in terms of differences of ideology but rather between “democracy" and “autocracy".

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