Caribbean & Central America - November 2012 (ISSN 1741-4458)

With less than a week until the 4 November municipal elections, the highly questioned supreme electoral court (CSE) has done little to provide much in the way of reassurance ahead of the vote, which is widely expected to see President Daniel Ortega’s Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional (FSLN) – which currently holds 109 of the country’s 153 municipalities - strengthen its local presence.

As was the case for the controversial November 2011 general elections, which saw Ortega win with 62% of the vote, amid widespread allegations of fraud, the build-up to the municipal vote has been characterized by concerns regarding the electoral process. Following its exclusion of some political parties from the municipal contest [RC-12-09], the CSE, which the European Union (EU) in its final observation report for the November 2011 election, described as displaying a “regrettable lack of neutrality”, has also failed to address a chief complaint of the beleaguered opposition: the composition of candidate lists. In response to complaints by the opposition Partido Liberal Independiente (PLI) and Partido Conservador that party lists included “ghost candidates” – i.e. dead people – CSE Magistrate José Luis Villavicencio denied that the court bore any responsibility for addressing these concerns, insisting this lies with the judiciary (which also remains under Ortega’s thumb). He said that the CSE acted “under the principle of good faith”, trusting that candidates registered by the various parties, fulfilled all the legal requirements.

Civil society groups also continue to flag up doubts about the accuracy of the electoral register. With some 3.74m Nicaraguans registered to vote, according to the CSE’s head and a close Ortega ally, Roberto Rivas, Mauricio Zúñiga, the director of a leading electoral watchdog, Instituto para el Desarrollo y la Democracia (Ipade), highlights continued anomalies in the process of issuing cédulas (national identity cards required to vote). This same complaint surfaced in last year’s general election, when Zúñiga estimated that more than 40,000 people were unable to vote because they had no cédulas. Zúñiga recently told a local analysis weekly, Confidencial, that 9.2% of those registered to vote still lacked the necessary papers ahead of the municipal election.

As was the case for the November 2011 general election and the November 2008 municipal vote, neither of the two main electoral watchdogs – Ipade or Ética y Transparencia - have been accredited to observe the election. While Ortega’s invitation to the Organization of American States (OAS) to “accompany” the municipal vote provided a boost to the credibility of the process, the OAS has since announced that its delegation would be reduced to 25, from the initial 65, for lack of budget.

Yet, it is worth pointing out that Ortega remains popular, in large part due to state-run social schemes, such as the flagship Hambre Cero (Zero Hunger), made possible by aid from Venezuela. According to the latest poll by pollster M&R Consultores, published on 10 October, Ortega has 60.2% approval rating – in line with the 62% who re-elected him as president last year. The survey, which was carried out between 15 and 23 September, showed that 55.9% of respondents identified themselves as pro-FSLN, a considerably higher fraction than the third of the population that has traditionally identified itself as Sandinista. Meanwhile, 68.6% of respondents said they would vote for the FSLN in the municipals and just 9.1% for the opposition. The survey interviewed 1,600 people and had a 2.5% margin of error.

• Saving energy

On 15 October the government of President Daniel Ortega also announced a US$17m energy saving plan, which aims to save up to 35 MW/hour – 6.1% of the current total, through introducing energy-saving florescent bulbs in 36,000 public street lamps around the country.  The government also announced plans to use solar panels to heat water in hospitals and reduce energy consumption in agricultural plants.

• Electoral violence

The final stages of the campaign have also been marked by violence. On 27 October Evaristo Luna Alfaro, a candidate for the opposition Partido Liberal Constitucionalista (PLC) in Siuna, in the North Atlantic Autonomous Region (Raan), was shot dead. Sources cited by local media attributed the death of Luna (known as ‘Comandante Catala’ when he was in the former Contra group Resistencia Nicaragüense), to José Tinoco, a municipal councillor for the other main opposition group, Partido Liberal Independiente (PLI). Tinoco denies the allegations.