The International Community Roundly Rejects the Legitimacy of Nicaragua’s Presidential Election
!!!
On November 7, 2021, Nicaragua held predictably uneventful elections in which President Daniel Ortega easily won reelection. The placid nature of the contest, arising from the fact that Ortega had jailed or driven into exile every likely opponent, belied the international condemnation of the exercise. He thus was able to secure his fourth consecutive term after 14 years in power. Ortega, who turns 76-years-old this month, will be joined once again by his wife Rosario Murillo (70) as vice-president, both representing the Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional (FSLN). A former Sandinista guerrilla, Ortega also ruled in the 1980s as part of a coalition government after overthrowing Anastasio Somoza Debayle in 1979. The election, widely denounced, also failed to receive recognition by a growing number of leftist political leaders across the region.
Going Through the Motions Amid General Condemnation
Página/12 of Buenos Aires reported that according to the Electoral Council, Ortega obtained 75% of the vote. In an election with seven arrested candidates, the government estimated that the turnout was 65% of the electoral roll. Other organizations argue that the abstention rate reached 80%. The contest was strongly questioned by the United States and the European Union but approved by Russia and Venezuela.
MercoPress of Montevideo noted that “Ortega, who came to power in 2007, equated his opponents with terrorism and said they were ‘demons’ who wanted neither peace nor tranquility in Nicaragua and opted for violence. The Sandinista regime has cracked down on protests, which Ortega considered a failed coup attempt. Ortega said his incarcerated rivals were conspirators.” “They were conspiring, they did not want these elections to take place, therefore these elections are, thank God, a sign, a commitment by the vast majority of Nicaraguans to vote for peace,” argued Ortega. Meanwhile, US President Joseph Biden has called the elections a “pantomime.” Nicaraguan opposition groups gathered in Madrid, Miami, Panama, and Washington to repudiate the elections and ask the world not to recognize the electoral results in Nicaragua, considering that the process was just a farce to re-elect Ortega. Human Rights Watch’s (HRW) José Miguel Vivanco wrote on Twitter that “Ortega will assume his fourth consecutive term due to repression, censorship, and fear.”
El Tiempo of Bogotá wrote that Ortega “strengthened his authoritarian power,” with 39 opposition leaders arrested (including businessmen, peasants, and students), 50 non-governmental organizations declared illegal, some 150 political prisoners, tens of thousands of Nicaraguans in exile for security or economic reasons, and the police occupation of the influential newspaper La Prensa. El Tiempo of Bogotá also noted that the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) and the Regional Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights for America denounced the exercise for its “lack of guarantees and freedoms.”
In Correio Braziliense of Brasilia Rodrigo Craveiro wrote that the 4.3 million Nicaraguans registered to vote “will be unable to choose strong opponents of the Orteguista regime. Ortega’s main political opponents are in prison. The international community has warned that it will not recognize the victory of the head of state.”
La República of Lima noted that Ortega “forced his fifth term without legitimacy.” Most countries in the Americas and the European Union openly ignored the results of the elections and demanded the release of the detained candidates, while Venezuela, Cuba, Russia, and Iran welcomed the official results.
Tal Cual of Caracas wrote that the Secretary General of the Organization of American States (OAS), Luis Almagro, requested the annulment of the elections in Nicaragua, considering that they are “illegitimate and violate the Constitution” of that country.
The Buenos Aires Times noted that the Foreign Ministry in Buenos Aires reacted to results of the Nicaraguan election by expressing “concern at the detention of opposition leaders,” but says it will uphold its “tradition of non-interference” in “internal issues of other nations.”
Rejection Across the Ideological Spectrum and Thoughts on Where This Could Go
In El Universal of Mexico City, Nobel laureate and former president of Costa Rica, Óscar Arias Sánchez, wrote of the “democratic farse” in Nicaragua. He observed that Nicaraguans, “tired of the deluge of corruption, the systematic violation of their human rights, the continuous deprivation of their freedoms, and of years of dictatorship,” are today, “like Noah, clinging to the bow of the ark patiently awaiting a sign, and despite the bad omens, trust and hope for change and a return to democracy.” Certainly, in Nicaragua, “democratic bodies have disappeared,” and he insisted that “a democrat, from the left or the right, must recognize that Nicaragua is a dictatorship in all its dimensions, where the separation of powers has disappeared, the leaders of the opposition are political prisoners, and corruption has taken over the state. In Nicaragua, the dream of the Sandinista revolution ceased to be a chimera to become an open nightmare, a nightmare in which being an opponent of the regime entails threats, persecution, jail, and in many cases even death.”
La Nación of Buenos Aires offered an editorial that noted the “consummate farce” of Nicaragua’s election. “Any reasonable person knows that the election recently held in Nicaragua…was a simulation to endorse the authoritarian regime through fraud.” “While democratic elections are characterized by the certainty of the rules of the game and the uncertainty of the results, the opposite occurred in this process.” This contest “took place in a climate of strong repression, with the spaces of the democratic opposition closed, and without the basic guarantees of electoral integrity.” Ortega has illegally removed his political opponents from the electoral competition: the regime eliminated three political parties for allegedly violating the electoral law, imprisoned seven candidates for the presidency, and another two had to go into exile.
Similar arguments were made in progressive and left-leaning news outlets. In an editorial, El Espectador of Bogotá argued that what happened in Nicaragua “is an affront against the democratic community in the region and in the world.” This “farce” through which Ortega and Murillo seek to establish “eternal power” for themselves “violates all democratic standards.” With seven opposition candidates arrested, with a high number of political prisoners, and the systematic violation of human rights, they are following the example of impunity that Nicolás Maduro enjoys in Venezuela, who is “propping up his dictatorship in the Central American country.”
La Jornada of Mexico City editorialized about Nicaragua’s “grim prospects,” noting that with the main candidates for the Presidency imprisoned – Cristiana Chamorro, Arturo Cruz, Félix Madariaga, Juan Sebastián Chamorro, Miguel Mora, Medardo Mairena, Noel Vidaurre, and Berenice Quezada, “rather than a process of expression of the popular will, what happened [on November 7] was a new chasm in the degradation of Nicaraguan institutions, and a simulation that does not fool locals or strangers.” Indeed, “due to its absolute lack of legitimacy and legality,” the re-election of Ortega threatens to rekindle social discontent towards his government and relaunch the protest movement that in 2018 brought together the most diverse sectors, a true citizen irruption that the Ortega autocracy only managed to quell at the cost of more than 300 deaths, the creation of paramilitary shock groups, and the establishment of a true police state.
Indeed, important leftist politicians condemned the election, offering criticism that has often been lacking on the Latin American political left. El Tiempo of Bogotá quoted Gustavo Petro, former guerrilla and the main presidential candidate of the Colombian left, who said, “I would not recognize elections” in Nicaragua. Petro stated that when a candidate who is at the same time president “persecutes his opponents,” calls them “the ‘chuza’ [scum]” and exiles them, “that is not democracy.”
Infobae of Argentina reported that the government of leftist President Pedro Castillo of Peru also “did not recognize the results of the elections in Nicaragua.” In a statement, the Castillo government affirmed that “they violate their credibility, democracy, and the rule of law, and deserve the rejection of the international community.” The statement, released by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, declared that the elections in Nicaragua in which Daniel Ortega was reelected with 75% of the votes, according to partial results, “do not meet the minimum criteria for free, fair and transparent elections.”
In El Universal of Mexico City, Roberto Rock L. pointed to Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador for his seeming disinclination to callout the sham in Nicaragua. He argued that “anything that the President says with the use of the weight of Mexico’s voice will be ignored if it does not refer to the farce of the electoral process that took place this weekend in Nicaragua.
What is happening in that nation will become a bleeding elephant in the middle of all the corridors through which López Obrador walks towards the platform in which, as he himself has announced, he intends to take for granted the moral strength of his government by care for the most vulnerable.”
In Confidencial Magazine of Nicaragua, Roberto Pizarro wrote of the “grotesque lie” perpetrated by the Ortega-Murillo regime. “Nepotism, corruption, and mass murders against defenseless citizens have erased the democratic and transformative project in one fell swoop.”
Also in Confidencial Magazine of Nicaragua, Santiago Cantón wrote of the Sandinista transmutation from “progressive revolution to the perfect dictatorship.” He mused that, clearly, the thought that overwhelmed Daniel Ortega and his inner circle on the night of February 25, 1990, when he was voted out of office must have been: “Curses! Fidel was right. To have called an election with extensive electoral observation from the international community had been a serious mistake.” Fidel Castro had warned him about it. The thousands of electoral observers and quick counts gave Violeta Chamorro an undisputed victory. Former President Jimmy Carter and the heads of the OAS and UN delegations tried in vain to communicate with Daniel Ortega to recognize Violeta Chamorro’s triumph. The hours passed and Ortega did not appear. Was he talking to Fidel to try some miraculous magic in the final vote? Or maybe just the blow of 54% of the votes against him had paralyzed him. Finally, the meeting happened, and Ortega acknowledged defeat. Clearly, he did not want that to happen ever again. In La Prensa of Managua, Fabián Medina also explored the “the construction of a tyrant.”
Looking forward, El Espectador of Bogotá wondered, “What’s next after Daniel Ortega’s electoral circus?” Certainly, “the future does not look good for the country.” “More repression, migration, economic crisis, and political persecution,” is what is likely to follow. In La Nación of Buenos Aires, Daniel Lozano argued that the “regime will have to continue in power with a discredited image to the world and a discontented civil society that has repercussions among its supporters.” In El Faro Magazine of San Salvador, Carlos Fernando Chamorro observed that “the latest polls carried out by CID Gallup, in September and October, reveal that a majority of 65% of the population would vote on November 7 for a formula of opposition candidates if they were not in prison, against 17% who support Ortega; and that same 65% demand the release of prisoners of conscience and the annulment of political trials.” And even the generally sympathetic Página/12 of Buenos Aires noted the “great challenges of the new Ortega government in Nicaragua,” including “international isolation, internal division, economic deterioration, and exclusion and migration.”