Caribbean & Central America - March 2016 (ISSN 1741-4458)

The Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional (FSLN)-controlled 92- member unicameral legislature last month elected two new magistrates to the seven-member supreme electoral court (CSE) after their predecessors resigned. The appointments to the CSE – one of the country’s least credible institutions -  attracted particular attention ahead of the November 2016 general elections in which President Daniel Ortega is seeking a third consecutive re-election.

After Johnny Tórrez and José Luis Villavicencio quit in January (for undisclosed reasons), Norma Moreno Silva and Mayra Salinas Uriarte were sworn in on 18 February for five-year terms following their election by 64 votes. Like their predecessors, both Salinas and Moreno have strong ties to the ruling party. Moreno is the sister of Fidel Moreno, the FSLN political secretary for the Managua mayoralty. She was also a member of the youth branch of the FSLN, Juventud Sandinista, and the founder of the Asociación de Niños Sandinistas Luis Alfonso Velásquez, a Sandinista organization for children. Until she was proposed as a candidate for the CSE, Moreno acted as Nicaragua’s ambassador to Argentina and Paraguay, a post which she had held since 2013.

Salinas also has close links to the FSLN, serving as co-director of the Institute of Culture since August 2015, when she was dismissed from her position as president of Nicaragua’s tourism office (Intur), a post that she had held since 2013. According to Nicaraguan opposition daily, La Prensa, Salinas’ dismissal from Intur was related to differences with powerful First Lady and official government spokesperson Rosario Murillo. La Prensa also notes that the tourism portfolio had suffered under Salinas’ watch with the average daily spending of foreigners in Nicaragua in mid-2015 put at US$40.7 compared with US$42.4 during the same period of 2014. During the first half of 2015, new investment projects for the tourism sector totalled US$22m, a significant decrease on the more than US$60m invested in the sector in the first half of 2014.

Concerns regarding the electoral process

In its report on the last (November 2011) elections, in which the FSLN won 62 legislative seats, up from 38 in 2006, while the Partido Liberal Independiente (PLI) won 26 and the Partido Liberal Constitucionalista (PLC) of disgraced former president Arnoldo Alemán (1997-2002) took just two, the European Union electoral observer mission (EU EOM) raised serious concerns which have yet to be addressed.

These mainly centred on the “lack of transparency and neutrality” of the CSE whose president Roberto Rivas has been in the post since 2000, overseeing three elections in which the FSLN has secured clear victories (notwithstanding widespread allegations of fraud).

In its report, the EU EOM notes that “while the CSE is composed along the principle of political representation, the loss of neutrality came about as a result of a progressive abandonment of pluralism in the appointment of its magistrates, who leaned ever more clearly towards the ruling party. This virtually one‐party composition was reflected in the composition of the electoral administration’s representations at lower levels, in the regional, departmental and municipal electoral councils (CERs, CEDs and CEMs), as well as among the polling station staff, as in all of these opposition representatives were systematically excluded or sidelined.”

The EU EOM cites as examples of this lack of neutrality, the CSE’s refusal to accredit observers from two established organisations, Instituto para el Desarrollo y la Democracia (Ipade) and Hagamos Democracia in the 2011 elections as well as “a widespread and systematic use of public resources for campaign purposes”, which is prohibited by article 107 of the electoral law.

• Ortega’s approval down

The most recent poll by Cid Gallup, published in investigative publication, Confidencial on 27 January, gave President Daniel Ortega just 57% approval, down from 77% in 2014. A respected local political commentator, Manuel Ortega Hegg, attributed the decline in part to disillusionment with the US$50bn ‘Gran Canal’ initiative that is to link the country’s Caribbean and Pacific coasts, which has generated widespread protests. The Cid Gallup poll, which interviewed 1,029 people across the country, showed the Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional (FSLN) with 57% approval, the Partido Liberal Constitucionalista (PLC) with 4% and the Partido Liberal Independiente (PLI) with 2%, while 35% refused to align themselves with any party.