Caribbean & Central America - July 2014 (ISSN 1741-4458)

Last month Nicaragua’s national assembly, which is controlled by President Daniel Ortega’s ruling Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional (FSLN), approved a new police law which crucially makes the head of the police force directly answerable to the president. The new legislation, which replaces the 1998 police law, follows a military reform approved in January 2014 which strengthened Ortega’s control over the military [RC-14-02]. Dissident Sandinista legislator, Víctor Hugo Tinoco, was quick to point out that this was the first time the military and the police had been placed under the direct orders of the president since the Somoza dictatorship was overthrown in 1979.

The new law was ratified on 11 June by 63 votes (of a possible 92 in the unicameral legislature), mainly from the FSLN, while it was rejected by 26 votes from the main opposition Partido Liberal Independiente (PLI) and the dissident Sandinista outfit, Movimiento Renovador Sandinista (MRS). It is worth noting that President Ortega has effectively controlled the police since his contentious September 2011 decree extending the term of the popular police chief, Aminta Granera, for an unspecified period [RC-11-10]. Yet the approval of the new law has stoked fresh complaints from the opposition and civil society groups about the erosion of the separation of powers in the country.

Besides making the police chief directly answerable to the president, civil society organisations have also flagged up concerns regarding a provision that establishes that volunteers seeking to join the so-called 'community police' need to have “community backing”. The opposition understands this to mean approval by the so-called 'family cabinets' or councils of citizen power. These councils, first introduced under Ortega’s previous administration (2007-2012) as part of efforts to boost citizen participation, became an extension of the executive by presidential decree in November 2007. The law also contains a provision for banning private investigations — though the leader of the FSLN bloc in the national assembly, Edwin Castro, said this was only applicable to those investigations that violate individuals’ constitutional rights.

Pending vacancies filled

Ortega’s increased control over the police came weeks after the national legislature finally picked officials to fill a total of 54 vacant government posts, which left the judiciary firmly in the hands of the ruling party. These posts had been staffed by officials whose terms have technically expired, but who had remained in place as a result of a controversial decree issued by Ortega in 2010 [RC-10-01].

The election of the officials, which took place in April, saw twelve of the supreme court (CSJ) magistrates retain their positions - including the CSJ president, Rafael Solís (FSLN) - while four were new appointments. Ten of the new magistrates are FSLN-aligned; three are aligned with the opposition Partido Liberal Constitucionalista (PLC) of disgraced former president, Arnoldo Alemán (1997-2002), and include Alemán’s brother, Antonio; two were proposed by the PLI; and one, Carlos Aguerri Hurtado, is aligned with the influential private sector lobby, Cosep. Aguirre is an advisor to his nephew and Cosep president, Jose Adán Aguerri.

As well as the CSJ magistrates, the other appointment which attracted attention was that of the presidency of the ten-member supreme electoral court (CSE), which Roberto Rivas has held since 2000. As expected, Rivas, who has overseen three elections which produced a clear victory for the FSLN (notwithstanding widespread allegations of fraud) retained his post. One of Nicaragua’s least publicly trusted officials, Rivas’s re-election prompted a statement of concern from Cosep as well as the US-based Carter Center. The CSE itself is among Nicaragua’s most discredited institutions, second only to the country’s political parties according to the most recent (2012) poll by the Latin American Opinion Project (Lapop), compiled by Vanderbilt University.

• Security gains

The approval of the new police law comes amid continued signs of progress vis-à-vis security. On 26 May an advisor to the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), Juan Pablo Gordillo, presented the UNDP’s regional human development report in Nicaragua, which noted that Nicaragua has the fourth lowest homicide rate in Latin America – registering 8.7 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants in 2013, behind only Uruguay (6.1); Argentina (5.8) and Chile (2). This is down from 11.3 in 2012 and 12.5 in 2011.