The Supreme Electoral Council (CSE) of Nicaragua, accused of being controlled by the Sandinista Daniel Ortega, gave the ruling party the Sandinista Front of the country’s 153 mayors as the winner, after accounting for 99.13% of the voting boards.
In these elections, which were said to not have a credible opposition and were said to be “an electoral farce,” mayors, vice mayors, and councilors were elected from all the municipalities of Nicaragua that were not yet under Ortega’s control.
The rest of the parties identified as being “accomplices” of Ortega and “false opponents” gathered only a minimum percentage.
“Ortega and Murillo have officially changed Nicaragua to a one-party state. Think of North Korea in Central America. The Sandinistas now hold 100% of the mayoralties in Nicaragua,” academic Ryan Berg said on his Twitter account.
Few remaining opposition mayors faced obstacles
During the 2017 municipal elections, the ruling FSLN party won at least 135 mayoralties, while the rest were distributed to the few remaining opposition parties, however the mayors denounced obstacles to receiving financing, as well as other obstacles to developing social plans .
Apolonio Fargas, a former opposition mayor of the city of Mulukukú, –a municipality in the country’s North Caribbean Coast Autonomous Region– told the voice of america that during his mandate he had a lot of pressure from the central government to the point of being arrested and persecuted by the Ortega government.
Fargas, now in exile in the United States, stresses that the “few Democratic mayoralties” that remained were also “asphyxiated” by the Ortega government.
“The dictator was restricting transfers little by little and it was difficult to generate development in the town,” Fargas said. “There was no investment and the Democratic mayors lived with their own resources, from the taxes of ranchers, and small businesses.”
According to former opposition deputy Eliseo Núñez, after the electoral process on Sunday, the question that citizens are asking is that this already means the installation of the single party.
“In fact, many people say yes. However, there is a big difference,” she says.
According to Núñez, the single parties are institutionalized in the constitution, in the electoral laws. “Then, there would have to be some type of competition system within the Sandinista Front and that is the question that remains, if there really is a change in that sense.”
Specifically, the former deputy considers that for the moment “Ortega wants to walk towards that but, obviously, he knows that there are drawbacks and that he has to overcome those drawbacks first.”
But Núñez indicates that the fact that Ortega has been granted 100% of the mayorships “is a total absurdity.” “There is no way, it does not save appearances; he is simply betting on the collapse of Nicaragua at the cost of staying in power for any length of time,” Núñez concluded.
In municipal elections on Sunday, according to the Supreme Electoral Council there was a participation of more than 60%, but the organization Urnas Abiertas abstention exceeded 80%.
However, the vice president of Nicaragua, Rosario Murillo, celebrated the results on Monday at noon and said that “families demonstrated, expressed themselves and above all chose to go forward.”
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