The “electoral companions” with whom the Supreme Electoral Council (CSE) replaced the electoral observation, with a view to the November 7 voting, are five personalities from the left, without much relevance in the international arena, and a couple of local organizations no experience in the field. With such actors, the Electoral Power – dominated by the official FSLN – will try to give legitimacy to a process considered as “farce” and “fraud” by opponents and national and international organizations.
In the elections will not be the observers of the Organization of American States (OAS), neither from the European Union, nor from the American Carter Center, because the Daniel Ortega regime considers them ungrateful, and in the reform of Law 331 or Electoral Law, approved on May 4, the ruling party replaced the observation electoral by the figure of “companions”, whose functions are not completely clear.
At the end of last September, the CSE magistrate, Mayra Salinas, explained that “the international companion is like the friend who comes to your house, who you invite to arrive and be able to accompany you in a process of sharing, seeing, enjoying , to know him and that he can make a recommendation ”. Instead, he criticized, “electoral observers want to be above your national process.”
Neither the Electoral Law nor the Manual for the Voting Process, which the CSE published in mid-October, establish the functions of electoral companions, despite the fact that the term has been used in the country since the 2011 municipal elections.
The change from observers to companions “aims to maintain ambiguously this role and close the doors to organizations qualified to carry out electoral observation, ”says the Urnas Abiertas citizen observatory in writing published on its website.
“There is little clarity about the specific tasks that these people will fulfill. Among many other things, it is unknown which phases of the process they will accompany, what methodology will be implemented and if the results of their monitoring will have any scope or influence. Similarly, it has not been reported whether the accompanying persons will have spaces for dialogue with opposition organizations, ”Urnas Abiertas continues.
A lawyer, who requested anonymity for security reasons, explains that the electoral issue is not governed solely by national laws, but by international agreements such as the Fundamental Charter of the United Nations and the OAS base agreement – which Nicaragua has signed – that they serve to “measure whether an election is being done well or not.”
The lack of observation “shows the lack of transparency of the process,” he highlights.
In the run-up to the voting, the regime of Ortega and Rosario Murillo, his wife, spokesperson and vice president, has eliminated political competition. Since last May they have been 39 opposition leaders imprisoned, businessmen, human rights defenders and journalists; among them the presidential candidates Cristiana Chamorro, Arturo Cruz, Félix Maradiaga, Juan Sebastián Chamorro, Miguel Mora, Medardo Mairena and Noel Vidaurre. All this has happened in the sight and patience of the electoral companions invited by the regime.
Communists, socialists and a war veteran
One of the “companions” is Gregorio Mondaca, from the Movement of Allendista Socialism of Chile. Last May, he failed in his bid to become a councilor for the Mayor’s Office in Puente Alto, a municipality in the Chilean capital. The movement it represents is not an official political party, but it is a member of the Sao Paulo Forum, where it defines itself as “opposition without legal status”.
José Luis Centella is the current president of the Communist Party of Spain (PCE). He is 63 years old and has a long political career. He was a deputy before Congress for the Malaga constituency in 1993, 1996 and 2000. He was also a deputy in the Seville constituency in 2011. He is an open sympathizer of the regime of Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua and Chinese communism. Currently the PCE has five deputies in the Spanish Congress, out of a total of 350 and only two deputies to the European Parliament, out of 59. They have no representative in the Senate.
Miguel Ángel Bustamante, also from the Communist Party of Spain. He was a deputy in the Congress of Seville for the Unidos Podemos party between 2016 and 2019, and is now secretary general of the Communist Party of Andalusia. After being invited by the CSE to monitor the voting in Nicaragua, Bustamante expressed in a virtual forum that “the electoral system in Nicaragua and the process have all the democratic guarantees.”
Jorge Kreyness, Secretary of International Relations of the Communist Party of Argentina. He is a journalist who defends the dictatorships of Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua. The party he represents is a member of the Frente de Todos coalition, led by President Alberto Fernández, but does not hold any relevant position in the Argentine government.
Gerry Condon, Past President of Veterans for Peace, an organization founded in 1985 in the United States and an old friend of the FSLN, who since 1983. A faithful defender of the Ortega regime, has publicly justified the detention of political prisoners, including the seven opposition candidates who were detained under the current electoral process.
“In the United States, the media say that Daniel Ortega is detaining all the opposition presidential candidates because he is afraid of losing the elections. We understand that there is another version that the Nicaraguan Government is clear that these people have been arrested for crimes, including money laundering, sitting down to make plans with hostile foreign powers, hiding millions of dollars and not making statements, “said Condon, in last July, to the propaganda media of the regime.
At the national level, the CSE invited the National Council of Universities (CNU) and the Office of the Attorney for the Defense of Human Rights (PDDH), both institutions controlled by the FSLN, to accompany the process on voting day.
Murillo: “170 companions”
In her daily soliloquy, the vice president and first lady, Rosario Murillo, indicated that “there are more than 170 brothers and sisters from our America, Europe, Eurasia, who have been accredited and will be arriving, some have already arrived, to participate as electoral companions on November 7, in this process of sovereign elections “
Murillo said that the “electoral companions” come from “Abkhazia, Belgium, Spain, France, United Kingdom, Ireland, Italy, South Ossetia, Russia, and from our America: Argentina, Canada, Colombia, Costa Rica, United States, Honduras, Mexico, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, Uruguay, and Trinidad and Tobago ”.
Murillo insisted that the votes “our elections, the elections that the Nicaraguan people have wanted.”
