The winds of change will not blow in most of Nicaragua’s municipalities. The Sandinista Liberation Front (FSLN), accused of being a terrorist party, will once again impose 73 complete formulas of mayors and vice mayors of the same number of communes throughout the country, for the municipal elections of next November 6.
Furthermore, as found Article 66 in the preliminary list published by the Supreme Electoral Council (CSE), in the Official Gazette The Gazette No. 172 this Tuesday, September 13, 2022, the party of Daniel Ortega will re-elect 27 more mayors, although they change their vice mayor; and they will leave in their same positions 3 vice mayors, although now they would go with another candidate to sit in the edilicia chair. In total, adding all the repetitions, the FSLN would be re-electing its municipal officials in 103 communes.
Of the 17 departmental capitals, at least 10 mayors will run with their same campaign partners to be re-elected next November.
Francisco Valenzuela and Melania Peralta, in Estelí; Leonidas Centeno and Rosalpina Pineda, in Jinotega; Reyna Rueda and Enrique Armas, in Managua; Aura Lyla Padilla and Rolando José Zapata, in Chinandega; Erwing De Castilla Urbina and María Estelbina Báez Castilla, in Juigalpa, Chontales; Diana Martínez and Marcio Rivas, in Madriz; Xiomara Tercero and Axel Gómez, in Nueva Segovia; Gustavo Adolfo Castro Jo and Carla Martin Brooks, in Bluefields; and Jhonny Francisco Gutiérrez Novoa and Digna Emérita Avilés Dávila, in San Carlos, Río San Juan.
Added to this number of mayors who seek to continue governing in their respective municipalities are 11 deputy mayors appointed in the 2017 elections who are now candidates for mayor. The 11 deputy mayors who will be promoted will be in the municipalities of Moyogalpa Y Buenos Airesin Rivas; San Miguelitoin San Carlos; Mozontein New Segovia; Niquinohomo Y Masaya in the department of Masaya; Telpanecin Madrid; Quezalguaque Y Lion, in the department of León; in the departmental capital of Grenade; Y Condegain Esteli.
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Guissela Castillo Medrano, current deputy mayor in León, will replace Mayor Róger Gurdián as a candidate for the mayor’s chair. Castillo’s formula will be Ariel “Panal” Delgado, an outstanding former player who played 25 seasons in the first division and is a member of the Nicaraguan Sports Hall of Fame.
Vice Mayor Janina del Socorro Noguera completed the current term of the late Mayor of Masaya Orlando Noguera and will now be the candidate to continue governing the commune. Of these cases, the “assumption” of the sculptor Pedro Pablo Vargas Mena in Granada by the mayor Julia Mena, elected in 2012 and re-elected in 2017, stands out.
Fallen from grace?
Among the moves of Sandinismo with its candidates there are also at least 19 complete formulas, for mayors and deputy mayors, who will not repeat themselves at the municipal feast. Of these 19 pairs of candidates, only the late mayor of Diriamba, Fernando Baltodano Velásquez, is excluded for obvious reasons, and will be replaced by his son, Harold Baltodano Cruz. The strange thing is that the “heir” of the Diriambina mayor’s office has not been given the vice mayor of her father, Marianela Gutiérrez Baltodano, but instead assigned Meyling Figueroa Argüello as a teammate.
According to information in the public domain in Diriamba, weeks before the “suicide” of Mayor Fernando Baltodano, the Nicaraguan Institute for Municipal Development (INIFOM) intervened in the commune and took over the former mayor’s office to investigate alleged irregularities with some checks. What was not possible to know is whether his second-in-command would also have been implicated in said investigations, for which the Sandinismo would have been forced not to renew the “prize.”
These exclusions become more suspicious when the case of the deposed mayor of Rivas, Wilfredo López, who had Esperanza Núñez Tenorio as deputy mayor, is observed. On July 12, it was learned that López was investigated for corruption scandals and removed from office. When appointing his substitute, Vice Mayor Núñez was also separated. Now on the list are Vilma Casanova Fuertes as a candidate for mayor and José Raimundo Membreño as her vice-president.
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In addition, in the departmental capitals of Granada, León and Masaya, the deputy mayors occupy the positions of mayoral candidates to replace their old formulas and their campaign partners are now councilors who were elected in the 2017 municipal elections.
More than 20 years as mayors
The Sandinista mayors Francisco Valenzuela (Estelí), Leonidas Centeno (Jinotega) and Sadrach Zeledón (Matagalpa) have governed their municipalities since 2009 without interruption. They had previously done so in the 2001-2005 period, that is, they are seeking their fifth term and fourth consecutive term in the next elections. The trio of mayors was sanctioned by the United States in November 2021 for supporting and directing the repression of the Ortega Murillo regime against protesters in their departments.
These three FSLN operators function in their respective departments as “caciques.” They are the ones who have direct contact with Rosario Murillo and his influence is almost unlimited beyond his mayoralty.
Valenzuela, Centeno and Zeledón are the FSLN mayors who have held the position the longest in their departmental capitals in Estelí, Jinotega and Matagalpa. With the return of Daniel Ortega to power in 2007, the three have been running as candidates since the municipal elections of 2008 and manage the communes for the same period that the dictator has been in the presidential chair. They became mayors a year after Ortega and have not left office.
For the municipal elections of 2004, the law prohibited the consecutive reelection of both the president and the mayors, however, that lock was declared inapplicable in 2009 by Sandinista judges of the Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Court of Justice (CSJ). In 2014, the Sandinista majority of the National Assembly, dominated by the ruling party, reformed the Political Constitution of the Republic and legalized indefinite reelection for both president and mayors.
Related news: Municipal votes will cost Nicaraguans 31.1 million dollars
According to official data, at least 4.4 million citizens will be able to participate in the municipal elections, out of a total of 6.5 million Nicaraguans. In the voting, 153 mayors, 153 deputy mayors, and more than 6,000 councilors from all the country’s municipalities will be “elected.”
According to analysis of the citizen observatory Open Ballot Boxes, the disputed municipal votes will cost Nicaraguans 31.1 million dollars. 40% of that total is earmarked for the payment of electoral campaign expenses to political parties, the most benefited would be the FSLN due to the high percentage of votes assigned to it by the CSE.
The electoral court is accused of executing and directing an “electoral farce” in which the FSLN is expected to gain absolute control of the country’s mayoralties, of which it already dominates 135, after eliminating in 2021 all traces of opposition with the cancellation of three political parties that would bring together the groups that criticize the Ortega Murillo administration.
