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

A local watchdog, Instituto Para el Desarrollo y la Democracia (Ipade), has issued its first report ahead of the 6 November general elections. Aside from predictable concerns regarding the politicization of the electoral authorities (CSE), the Ipade flagged up a recent decree by President Daniel Ortega which incorporates three municipalities, all formerly part of the South Atlantic Autonomous Region (RAAS), into the Chontales department. Designed to benefit Ortega’s Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional (FSLN) in the legislative vote, the decree also violates the autonomy framework governing the impoverished indigenous Atlantic Coast, serving as the latest blow to the autonomy process under the Ortega government.

Ortega insisted that the April decree, incorporating El Rama, Muelle de los Bueyes and Nueva Guinea, was necessary to better “attend” the needs of the municipalities. Critics, however, including the mayors of the three municipalities, all of which are opposition-aligned - El Rama and Nueva Guinea are run by the Partido Liberal Constitucionalista (PLC) and Muelle de los Bueyes by the PLC dissident party, Alianza Liberal Nicaragüense (ALN) - complain that it is intended to assist Ortega in achieving his main electoral objective: securing a legislative majority. He currently has just 38 out of 92 seats in the unicameral legislature. Representing some 40% of the total votes cast in the RAAS, according to the Ipade report for the 2006 elections, the three departments together contributed 10,000 votes to the FSLN compared to 43,000 for the PLC and ALN combined. This resulted in an overall defeat for the FSLN, which failed to win either of the legislative seats assigned to the RAAS. While Chontales is not completely in the hands of the ruling party (which controls three of the eleven municipalities, including the capital, Juigalpa) and has one of the region’s three legislative seats), critics point out that as the home turf of both Ortega and his running mate, the popular former army chief Omar Halleslevens, the region is likely to be more favourable to Ortega in November, serving to dilute the impact of the opposition in the three municipalities.

Aside from reviving constitutional concerns (the mayors protest that the decree is illegal, based on constitutional article 138 which authorises the legislature alone to determine the “political and administrative divisions of national territory”), the decree has also exposed Ortega’s lack of regard for the autonomy process, which began in 1987 and was intended to grant indigenous groups local governance and control over natural resources. The three municipalities have since announced plans to revive a project, first floated under the previous government of Enrique Bolaños (2002-2007), to establish a separate autonomous region to be named “Zelaya Central”. This also follows signs of frustration from the North Atlantic Autonomous Region (Raan) under the Ortega government: in April 2009, the indigenous Miskito Council of Elders in Bilwi, the Raan’s provisional capital, announced it was seceding to form an independent Nación Miskito. The issue attracted international headlines after clashes between indigenous protesters and security force turned deadly [RC-09-05]; since then, however, the threat to secede has yet to be borne out.

• Other concerns

The Ipade also raised concerns about access to cédulas (national identity cards), which are necessary to vote. Voting itself is not mandatory. The Ipade said that of the 80 municipalities to which it had sent observers, only 18 (22.5%) had delegations set up to issue the cédulas. This adds to controversy over the CSE’s decision in August last to raise the price of cédulas by 600% to C$300 (US$13). This is in a country where in 2009, 44.7% and 9.7% of the population were described as living in poverty and extreme poverty respectively. Denouncing the move as an attempt by the FSLN to manipulate voter lists, civil society groups and opposition politicians complained to the press that government and political party resources were being used to buy cédulas for party members.