Crime: Three dead in Post-Election Violence in Nicaragua

“There is no way they can reverse this on us,” Obando said. “If the riot police attack, it will be a disaster. Nueva Segovia is a complicated place. We are very belligerent here. This was the heart of the contra corridor and we have the bad habit of resolving our problems in an inappropriate way.”

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Politics: Sandinistas consolidate single-party rule in Nicaragua

A tin-pot election that started with the frightening possibility of electing a zombie governmentculminated in an overwhelming victory for the ruling Sandinista Front early Monday morning amid allegations of dirty tricks, official mischief, voter exclusion, political tomfoolery, post-electoral violence and system collapse...

As of early Monday morning, gangs of Sandinsitas and Liberals were clashing in La Paz Centro (León), there were reports of gunfire in Sebaco (Matagalpa) and Santo Domingo (Chontales), and bouts of violence in Jinotega. In addition, Núñez says the Sandinista Front reportedly cut the electricity in municipality of La Libertad (Chontales) when it started to appear that the PLI was going to win the mayor’s office in President Ortega’s hometown...

...the “zombie parties”—the ALN, APRE and the Conservative Party—are verifiably undead. In virtually all of the rural municipalities, the three phony parties won only one or two votes each. That means that not even the family members of the dead candidates voted for their deceased relative as a final gesture of loving memory.  The shameful electoral performance by those three parties offers compelling mathematical proof of their inexistence and—incidentally—of the CSE’s corruption...

The biggest opposition complaint yesterday was over inconsistencies in the voter registries. Many voters claimed their names had mysteriously disappeared from the voter registration lists posted at the voting centers where they had voted all their lives. Others complained that their names appeared on the main voter registration posted on the front wall of the voting center, but not on the list at the voting booth, which prevented them from casting their ballot.

The voter-registration problems are so chronic in Nicaragua that the phenomenon has its own name: “raton loco”—named after the voters who are made to run around like one of the three blind mice trying to figure out where they are supposed to vote (see how they run)...

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More than 20% of Nicaraguans who tried to vote Sunday were excluded from the polls because they did not appear on either of the two voter registries, according to a preliminary report by electoral watchdog the Institute for Development and Democracy (IPADE).

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Politics: Coming Soon... Nicaragua's One Party Political System

The ruling Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN), which since 2007 has eliminated virtually all democratic checks and balances by consolidating single-party control over all four branches of government and state institutions, will be going for a royal flush in November.

The party controlled by President Daniel Ortega and his omnipresent wife has stated that it expects to win “by an avalanche” in essentially every municipality. That prophecy, which will most likely come true, will be a deathblow to municipal autonomy (or what remains of it) and fulfill the president’s publically professed dream of converting Nicaragua into a one-party system.

The opposition fully expects the elections to be farce. The PLI says it’s participating in the process to document the fraud and to convert the spectacle into a “platform for rebellion.” 

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