Caribbean & Central America - 16 November 2004

Nicaragua's leftwing opposition, the Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional, swept the municipal elections on 7 November. No sooner had the scale of the party's victory been confirmed than its leader, Daniel Ortega, orchestrated an effort to redraw the constitution that, if successful, would clip the wings of incumbent President Enrique Bolaños.

It was a bad night for Bolaños. While the Sandinistas were busy bagging the majority of the country's 152 municipalities (they took at least 90, including the all-important mayoralty of Managua, which was won by Dionisio Marenco, and 15 of the 17 department capitals) his small Alianza por la República (Apre) managed to muster a mere five mayoralties, including one departmental capital. It was, however, the main opposition party, the Partido Liberal Constitucionalista (PLC), that suffered the biggest setback. The party that brought Bolaños to power, before breaking ties acrimoniously after he pursued PLC supremo Arnoldo Alemán on corruption charges, performed miserably at the polls.

The PLC's woeful performance can be attributed to a number of factors. Its vote was split by the presence, for the first time, of the Apre, which broke off from the PLC in 2002. The PLC took 41 mayoralties (53 fewer than before) and only one departmental capital. Abstention hit a record high of 52%. The low turnout, especially among PLC supporters, suggests that the party's decision to stick by Alemán, despite the fact he is serving 20 years on corruption charges, is deeply unpopular. A number of polls taken over the last few months clearly shows that the electorate has had enough of Alemán. The same polls also show that voters are fed up with Ortega. This is not as irreconcilable with the electoral results as it might appear. The Sandinista support base is much more committed than that of the PLC; Nicaraguans who are liable to vote for the PLC in presidential elections are simply not interested in municipal elections.

Ortega insists that the municipal elections will dictate the outcome of the presidential elections in 2006 and that success in Managua will be a stepping stone to the presidency. There are good reasons to suspect this will not be the case. The Sandinista candidate, Herty Lewites, won Managua in 2001 and Ortega was later crushed in the presidential elections. Ortega also lost the two elections before that. As in El Salvador, where the left-wing opposition Frente Farabundo Martí­ para la Liberación Nacional (FMLN) has a vice -like grip on the capital San Salvador, the Sandinistas have failed to transform local success into national power. However, there is no doubt that the Sandinistas are enjoying their moment in the sun. Buoyed by their success in the municipal elections, the Sandinistas immediately came up with a constitutional reform bill in parliament, which would trim back the president's powers. The bill proposed that the president should submit his ministerial and ambassadorial choices to parliament for approval and that parliament be given powers to remove officials considered to be incompetent. In a legislature largely hostile to Bolaños, this would give the opposition considerable latitude to pick and choose the cabinet.

The bill would also allow parliament to propose the candidates for the banking superintendent, the chief prosecutor and the human-rights procurator and nullify Bolaños's veto. It proposes that the assembly may override a veto with a simple majority vote, rather than the customary two-thirds. An alliance between the Sandinistas and the PLC would be more than sufficient to achieve this. The same two parties clubbed together to gain the 56 votes required for the constitutional reform bill. However, it will need to be approved in a second sitting before becoming law.

The most significant reform proposal is that concerning the veto. On 12 November Bolaños partially vetoed the law on the judicial career because it included provisions that maintained the political stranglehold on judicial appointments enjoyed by the PLC and the Sandinistas. If the constitutional reform bill were passed, the two parties would be able to come together to override the veto.

The reform bill, which has the imprimatur of Ortega, could be the first step towards the parliamentary system for which the veteran Sandinista leader has been campaigning. On the other hand, it might be no more than a bid to limit Bolaños's powers in the run-up to the presidential elections, which the Sandinistas are now confident of winning. In the event of this, Ortega, who has already declared that he will run for the presidency, is unlikely to favour a parliamentary system.

Impeachment?
One good piece of news for Bolaños is that the opposition's preoccupation with the constitutional reform bill means that efforts to impeach him have been put on hold for the time being. A senior member of the Sandinistas, Edwin Castro, said on 11 November that there was not time to set up a special parliamentary commission in compliance with a request by the comptroller-general to investigate corruption allegations surrounding Bolaños before the legislature's current sitting ends on 15 December.

It looks increasingly unlikely that Bolaños will be investigated at all. Ortega seemed to confirm this when he suggested in the wake of the municipal elections that the Sandinistas would be unlikely to back any effort to impeach the president.