Ortega Leads all 153 City Halls in Nicaragua in Scant Voting
Municipal Elections 2022: The FSLN already had control of 141 City Halls and was poised to declare themselves the winner of those in the hands of abettor parties
HAVANA TIMES – The dictatorship of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo were leading all of Nicaragua’s 153 municipalities, according to a first report from the Supreme Electoral Council (CSE). On Sunday, November 6, a questioned Municipal voting took place, which did not include opposition parties. Citizen participation was very limited.
With this result, the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) would have 100% of the Nicaraguan City Halls under its power.
Some 3.7 million Nicaraguans were summoned to these elections, in which only the Sandinista Front and the following political groups collaborating with the Ortega dictatorship participated: Constitutionalist Liberal Party (PLC), Alliance for the Republic (APRE), Nicaraguan Liberal Alliance (ALN), Independent Liberal Party (PLI Alliance) and Yapti Tasba Masraka Nanih Asla Takanka (Yatama).
The citizen observatory Urnas Abiertas indicated that during these #Municipal2022 votes an abstentionism of 82.7% was registered. This abstention level exceeds that observed in the “electoral farce” of 2021, which they say was 81.5%.
These are the first municipal votes since the socio-political landscape in Nicaragua changed, following the brutal repression and massacre against the citizen protests of the April Rebellion of 2018. The Ortega regime imposed a Police State that year, still in force, with more than 200 political prisoners, and canceled the legal status of three opposition parties.
In these municipal votes with little credibility, the FSLN already had control of 141 City Halls distributed in 15 departments and the two autonomous regions on the Caribbean Coast. Of these, 135 mayoralties were assigned by the CSE in 2017 and another six were taken over in October 2020 and July 2022.
It appears that this time the Sandinista Front decided to award itself all the remaining City Halls that were in the hands of collaborationist parties such as the Constitutionalist Liberal (PLC) and Nicaraguan Liberal Alliance (ALN). The only opposition party that had any city halls, Ciudadanos por la Libertad (CxL), was stripped of legal status in 2021.
The new FSLN mayoralties would be:
- Camoapa
- San Jose de los Remates
- Santo Domingo
- La Trinidad
- Ciudad Antigua
- Bocana de Paiwas
- El Tortuguero
- Muelle Los Bueyes
- La Cruz de Río Grande
- Mulukuku
- Wiwili
- San Francisco de Cuapa
The Sandinista Front recycled 118 mayoral candidates out of the 141 mayorships it controls in Nicaragua, according to a data analysis made by Confidencial. Of these, 101 mayors were previously reelected and will continue in office for another consecutive term.