Nicaragua's Elections: Ortega's turn to be the next Somoza
During the summer, Nicaragua’s president, Daniel Ortega, and his party, the Sandinista Front (FSLN) made several unconstitutional decisions to guarantee his success in the presidential elections in November. His victory would mean that a government that represses freedom of expression and overlooks human rights abuses would remain in power perhaps indefinitely, as democracy and elections are quickly becoming unviable ways to remove Ortega from power.
On July 29, the president of the National Assembly announced the expulsion of 28 congressmen for disloyalty to the newly appointed head of their party, the Independent Liberal Party (PLI), which represents the largest opposition group. The expulsion order was mandated by the Supreme Electoral Council and backed by the 2014 constitutional reform, which allows the destitution of congressmen due to a change in their political loyalty, according to La Prensa. This constitutional reform, which none of the 28 expelled congressmen supported, also succeeded in removing the constraints on consecutive presidential term limits.
The change in political loyalty from the 28 expelled congressmen followed another ruling by a government body earlier in the summer. In June, the Supreme Court of Justice, headed by several Sandinistas, issued a sentence to remove Eduardo Montealegre, who was elected head of the party in 2011, as the PLI’s legal representative. The party’s leadership was handed over to Pedro Reyes, believed by many to be a Sandinista puppet due to his confidence in Sandinista militants as electoral observers in municipal precincts, among other reasons.
The decision to remove Montealegre and 28 of his fellow PLI congressmen not six months before the presidential elections was, while unprecedented, not Ortega’s only ploy to guarantee success in the elections, as noted by the Wall Street Journal. In June, the Nicaraguan president announced that international observers were not allowed in the November elections, a clear message to the international community that Ortega’s regime does not care for international democratic standards.
Moreover, early in August, Ortega announced that his wife, Rosario Murillo, would be his running mate in his bid for a third consecutive, and fourth overall, five-year presidential term, directly violating the Nicaraguan constitutional statutes against nepotism. Although Ortega is polling at 44% of the vote according to the Costa Rican center Borge y Asociados (the poll was conducted in May), many original Sandinistas have become disappointed with his regime, which is resembling the Somoza dictatorship they overthrew in 1979 all too well. While Nicaragua’s new dictator seems unstoppable, most of the country just hopes history will not repeat itself to the point of another civil war before democracy is restored.