Nicaragua’s Bishops: “Let every citizen decide and act”
“Voting is a right. The decision to vote or not to vote should be made by each person according to the dictates of their inner conscience,” declares the Nicaraguan Episcopal Conference.
“Voting is a right. The decision to vote or not to vote should be made by each person according to the dictates of their inner conscience,” declares the Nicaraguan Episcopal Conference.
With less than eighty days to go before the November 6 elections, there’s almost no electoral propaganda on the streets of Managua and the country’s principal cities. Even the official propaganda, which has been a permanent fixture during the ten years of Comandante Daniel Ortega’s rule, is sparser than at other times. Beside the main roadways, the giant pink billboards have lost their original glow.
The main opposition group has called for abstention, under the slogan “I won’t throw away my vote,” or “No one to vote for.” If their aim is to repudiate the electoral panorama and call for political resistance, this isn’t the most effective method.
Gen. Julio Cesar Aviles, head of the Nicaraguan army, assured the public that the acquisition of 50 Russian T72 model tanks does not represent a US $80 million debt for Nicaragua, as the Moscow press asserted last April on the Sputnik news agency’s website.
The Autonomous Women’s Movement (MAM) issued a statement in which they condemned Rosario Murillo’s candidacy for vice-president for the governing Sandinista National Liberation Front, while they “strongly reject the ambition” of Comandante Daniel Ortega’s regime to “carry on in power and to establish a dictatorship, dynastic in nature.”
The voice of Sergio Ramirez, one of the most respected and influential intellectuals in Latin America, also embodies the weight of political experience, intuition and historical perspective. All of this leads him to say: “We’re watching a movie [in Nicaragua] we’ve seen before and we know that it doesn’t end well”.
The immediate reaction to the moral collapse evidenced by the Ortega government in Nicaragua is a growing political apathy among the population. Nevertheless, although it may seem contradictory, this represents a delusive preface to a phase of fluctuation already latent in the struggles of the masses.
For us Nicaraguans who grew up under the shadow of a dynastic dictatorship – in my father’s words, “the bloody Somoza brood”- naming the wife of an authoritarian ruler as the vice presidential candidate has the unavoidable resonance of a disastrous past.
Nicaraguan president Daniel Ortega inscribed his wife, Rosario Murillo, on Tuesday as his running mate in the general elections set for November 6. With the organized opposition banned from taking part in the elections, Murillo, who currently holds several important government posts, is the virtual VP come January, 2017.
Sixteen representatives in Nicaragua’s Parliament, who were elected in 2011 under the Liberal Independent Party Alliance (PLI Alliance)’s umbrella at the voting booths, and who formally expressed their intention to no longer remain on in this party, were unseated by the Supreme Electoral Council (CSE), according to a notification sent to the National Assembly.