Open Polls affirms that Nicaraguan citizens have opted for “electoral abstentionism” as a way of rejecting the dictatorship of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo, who decided to have total control at the municipal level with the recent elections in which 100% was awarded. of the municipalities of Nicaragua.
«Far from reading abstentionism as ‘political apathy’, the electoral phenomenon of withdrawing the people from the polls is in line with a silent strategy of forceful rejection of the Ortega-Murillo dictatorship. The abstention in the last municipal elections accounts for the enormous rejection of the regime and its accomplices,” says the article published by the observatory.
Related news: Open polls figure at 82.67% the abstention in the municipal polls in Nicaragua
The report published in the Regional Transparency Program adds that “in municipal elections (participation) is usually lower than in presidential ones, but this year (2022) the percentage of participation was unjustifiably low: only approximately 17.3% showed up.” to the polls, that is to say that 82.7% decided not to exercise their right to vote and of the percentage that did vote, it is necessary to take into account the State workers who were forced to attend the voting centers and send photographic receipts with their fingers stained from ink”.
In the 2022 municipal elections, a total of 3,722,884 Nicaraguans over the age of 16, out of a population of 6.6 million, were summoned to elect the mayors, deputy mayors, and councilors of the 153 municipalities of Nicaragua, according to data from the Supreme Council. Electoral (CSE), which dropped 755,450 voters in one year, without explaining the reasons.
“We see how abstention played a role in the expression of the people’s discontent to the illegitimate regime that submits it, the only way for them to retain power is through arms and the cooperation of police, military and parastatal armed forces”, he affirms. Open polls.
During this process, the regime also forced state workers to attend the polls, “they redoubled their efforts and intensified the pressure on state workers who had not been summoned to the polls, through WhatsApp messages and social networks they threatened them with dismissals, they insisted asking them if they had gone to vote and reminding them that they were waiting for them because they needed all the workers who went to vote, they even pointed out that their job position was thanks to the commander.
“They also activated a network of mobilizers, that is, Sandinista militants who mobilized other people to participate in the vote, this task was accompanied by a list to count how many people they carried, buses, trucks, caponeras, motorized vehicles, taxis, they made rounds during afternoon hours through different streets to offer people to take them to the Voting Centers, “adds the report.
Despite this, the Voting Centers remained with little influx of citizens, which resulted in 82.67% abstention. “But the truth revealed by the number of abstentionism breaks the fiction of Ortega’s totalitarianism,” says the organization.
