Bolan~os Wins/ Nicaraguan Politics 101

[URRACA]

Here is a little background on what has happened and what will still need too.
The stakes were high when Nicaraguan voters went to the polls on November 4
to choose a new president and National Assembly, and it is in the interest
of the United States and the other countries of the Western Hemisphere to
ensure that the electoral process is fair and open.

This will be the third set of national elections since February 1990, when
ballots removed a band of Marxist revolutionaries from office and drew the
curtain on a 169-year legacy of authoritarian dictatorships. The ensuing
government of national reconciliation under President Violeta Chamorro
facilitated the transition from civil war to peace, reduced the armed forces
from 90,000 partisan combatants to 12,000 more professionally oriented
soldiers, and labored to reinstate the economically isolated nation within
the global market. Despite such progress, the country is now in danger of
returning to strong-man (caudillo) rule.

Efforts by outgoing President Arnoldo Alemán to eliminate rival moderate
political parties and strike a deal with the leftist Sandinista National
Liberation Front have undermined the prospects for fair and open elections.
Compounding the problem, voter rolls have not been kept up, registration
efforts have languished, and the national system of electoral councils has
become highly politicized and so poorly funded by Nicaragua's own government
that it solicits foreign donations.

If elections were held today, it is unlikely they could be judged as fair.
No matter who wins this year's contest, if the process is manipulated, the
stability of the country and the region will be jeopardized. Nicaragua's
fragile progress will be undermined, renewing the likelihood of civil
conflict, further depressing the hemisphere's second poorest economy,
unsettling Central American markets, and complicating already strained
relations with the United States and other creditor nations.

Although President Alemán's political maneuvers are mostly to blame for the
country's volatile condition, inconsistently implemented U.S. policies have
aggravated the situation. Washington did little to signal its concerns while
Alemán hacked away at many of the hard-won democratic gains Nicaragua
achieved in the early 1990s. More worrisome, the United States fell behind
this year in its effort to provide technical assistance to electoral
authorities and in funding its portion of an international observer
initiative to monitor elections.

To help Nicaragua safeguard past achievements and regain momentum toward
institutionalizing its democracy, the Bush Administration should take the
following actions:

Send a strong and clear message urging Nicaragua's current and future
leaders to embrace more democratic behavior;

Accelerate efforts to provide technical assistance and contribute to an
international monitoring effort that would be comprehensive enough to foil
attempts at fraud; and

Work with Congress to reform current U.S. Agency for International
Development (U.S. AID) funding procedures to ensure more timely assistance
and prepare for wholehearted implementation in the future.

DEMOCRATIC PROGRESS AT STAKE
When the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) overthrew the sleepy
dictatorship of Anastasio Somoza in 1979, its comandantes promised to
establish a government of "democracy, justice, and social progress...without
ideological discrimination." Instead, they erected a repressive one-party
state that allied with Cuba to arm a guerrilla force in El Salvador and
stoke an insurrection in Honduras. Pressured militarily by the U.S.-backed
Nicaraguan Resistance, and diplomatically by the United States and the
Organization of American States, the Sandinistas finally allowed open
elections in 1990. Their president, Daniel Ortega, was defeated at the polls
by Violeta Chamorro, the widow of an assassinated newspaper publisher.

Chamorro's administration went on to lay the foundation for a viable
democracy and free market. With U.S. aid totaling $800 million (in addition
to other foreign assistance), President Chamorro revived an economy that had
been exhausted by spendthrift redistribution schemes, loosened the
Sandinistas' proprietary grip on public institutions such as the army and
police, and re-established Nicaragua's identity independent from the FSLN.

Chamorro's successor, Arnoldo Alemán, came into office promising to build on
this progress but soon abandoned the national interest, allegedly for
personal ones. In 1999, he forged a hasty pact with the rival Sandinista
party to gain control of the country's judicial authorities at a time when
he was facing charges based on a questionable transfer of government
property to relatives. 1

Goaded by Alemán, Liberal and Sandinista deputies approved constitutional
changes in January 2000 that weakened the autonomy of the Supreme Court and
other judicial bodies--including the Supreme Electoral Council (CSE), which
was reconfigured as an exclusive Liberal-Sandinista commission. Space for
political opponents was further reduced by a ban on independent candidacies
and new laws imposing stiff requirements for all parties to maintain legal
status. For example, to be legitimate, a challenging party had to win a
minimum of 4 percent of the vote in a national election.

As a result, most of Nicaragua's minor parties lost their status. Even the
150-year-old Conservative Party, the third largest political party in
Nicaragua, could lose its charter if neither its presidential candidate nor
any of its candidates for at-large Assembly seats receive more than the
required portion of the vote this November. 2

Although Alemán claims the Liberal-Sandinista pact was intended to
strengthen bipartisanship, two constitutional provisions enacted under his
leadership suggest otherwise. One provision creates seats in the National
Assembly for the outgoing president and the second-place finisher in
presidential elections. Another grants prosecutorial immunity to
assemblymen. These clauses conveniently protect Alemán from being tried for
corruption after he leaves office and also insulate former Sandinista
comandante and current assemblyman Daniel Ortega from charges that he
molested his stepdaughter. 3

On a broader scale, these provisions function to keep both the presidency
and the legislature in the hands of Liberal and Sandinista party leaders
Alemán and Ortega. In the forthcoming November presidential elections,
Ortega will face 73-year-old Enrique Bolaños of Alemán's Constitutional
Liberal Party (PLC)--already a tight race. If Ortega wins, Alemán and
Bolaños will become assemblymen at-large, with the former president
conceivably assuming the leadership. If Bolaños wins, Alemán and Ortega will
receive seats in the Assembly, each commanding his party's powerful bloc.

A Bolaños presidency may be expected to pursue lean government and free
market policies as well as to try to unravel some of the self-serving
constitutional changes that Alemán rammed through the Assembly. But if
Bolaños loses, the Liberal-Sandinista pact could turn back the clock to a
more authoritarian time when members of the Somoza family took turns leading
the country, on one occasion enlisting a family friend to become president
and give the appearance of democracy. 4

Several members of Alemán's party say that he has struck a personal deal
with Ortega to alternate with him between the presidency and control of the
legislature, since no president can succeed himself, but Ortega might not
abide by such an arrangement once in office. Although the former comandante
has promised not to revisit the leftist regime he once headed, he leads what
is left of the FSLN's radical core. Moderate Sandinistas like Sergio Ramírez
(Ortega's former vice president) no longer back him and claim that he is
interested only in regaining power. 5

Despite pledges to pursue more friendly relations with the United States,
Ortega is no friend of free markets or property rights. Both as a comandante
and later as president, he presided over expropriations worth billions and
reportedly transferred money from the Central Bank into his own pocket
during his last three weeks in office. His return also could revitalize
unsavory alliances with Cuba, Libya, Iraq, and China--countries with which
the FSLN continues to maintain close ties. 6

POTENTIAL FOR A MANIPULATED ELECTION
As a result of the constitutional provisions that President Alemán pushed
through the Assembly to enhance the dominance of the Liberal and Sandinista
parties, the FSLN may hold key advantages in the forthcoming elections.

Predominance in Electoral Councils. On July 5, Roberto Rivas, president of
the Supreme Electoral Council, dismissed workers who belonged to the
Conservative and other minority parties from the national, departmental, and
municipal councils. Although the practical effect of the order is unclear,
Liberals claim that it leaves Sandinistas in dominant positions in most of
the councils. 7

A Powerful Corps of Supporters. Daniel Ortega's candidacy benefits from a
cadre of FSLN militants left over from the Front's former neighborhood
surveillance committees and turbas divinas ("divine mobs" or organized
demonstrators). By mid-July, the Front had already trained 30,000 poll
workers ("electoral commandos") to challenge the credentials of voters and
question ballots in the country's 8,400 precincts. 8 Enrique Bolaños should
have inherited an equivalent legacy from Alemán's party machine. Instead, he
had to pry the leadership of a tepid campaign and lackluster poll-worker
training effort from Alemán's grasp and reorganize it.

Weak Voter Registration Effort. A half-hearted campaign to register voters
that received scant publicity concluded on August 7. During the final week,
the CSE, funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development, launched a
mobile registration drive in Managua and 33 remote communities. Yet an
estimated 300,000 citizens remain unregistered, mostly in remote mountain
areas once controlled by the Nicaraguan Resistance, which opposed the
Sandinista regime. Moreover, some 200,000 voter identification cards have
yet to be delivered to those who have recently registered.

Opportunities for Fraud. Various deficiencies in the electoral system
present easy opportunities for fraud. There are no recent census data, and
the current voter list, or padrón , is badly outdated. The CSE has not
devised a reliable means to transmit vote tallies from rural communities to
municipalities to departments and on to its national headquarters. Last
year's attempt to report municipal election results by fax failed because of
operator error, power outages, and unreliable phone lines. Finally,
constitutional changes restructuring the CSE required that the Council would
need a quorum of five of its seven members to meet to ratify the totals. If
representatives of either party do not like the results, they can refuse to
meet--throwing the country into constitutional chaos.

Under these circumstances, a fair vote in a contest in which the two major
candidates are running neck-and-neck is far from certain. Regardless of who
is elected, it is critical that the results reflect the will of the people.
An unfair or fraudulent contest could result in economic and political
volatility both within the nation and throughout the region.

FLAGGING EFFORT AT CRUCIAL MOMENT
In 1990, U.S. support for national elections helped to create the basis for
a viable electoral system in Nicaragua. In 1996, similar assistance built on
that foundation and helped to establish the respected local non-governmental
organization (NGO) Grupo Etica y Transparencia (Ethics and Transparency
Group), which fielded 4,000 volunteer observers in that year's contest and
conducted a crucial "quick count" as a check on official results. But when
Nicaragua's progress toward a truly democratic electoral system ground to a
halt as a result of Alemán's attempts to manipulate the system for his own
ends, the Clinton Administration chose a low-key approach in its bilateral
relations with the country.

Washington's rhetorical response was muted, probably to avoid re-igniting
old arguments over U.S. policies toward Nicaragua that had raged in the
1980s. U.S. assistance levels remained intact at about $20 million a year,
and the official U.S. position became that the White House would work with
whoever won a fair contest. Such signals implicitly minimized the importance
of the political damage done by the so-called Liberal-Sandinista pact and
made the status quo seem acceptable.

Meanwhile, systemic weaknesses that were evident in the 1996 contest that
put Alemán in office were never corrected, either for the 2000 municipal
vote or for the 2001 national elections. Neither the U.S. Embassy nor U.S.
AID elevated the matter to a priority high enough to pressure the Alemán
government to effect any reforms. A national census conducted in 1995 has
never been updated even though new potential voters have reached the legal
age of 16, others have died, and many continue to cross borders into
Honduras and Costa Rica to seek employment. Nor has the voter list
( padrón ) been updated to reflect many of these changes or properly
verified.

Although U.S. AID grants were available this year to help the Supreme
Electoral Council register voters in marginal areas where non-Sandinista
parties do well, the U.S. mission did not promote the effort until it was
nearly too late to make a difference. Nor did it urge the Nicaraguan
government to extend registration for a longer period. Critical technical
issues such as the unreliable fax reporting system wait to be addressed as
the CSE complains of funding shortfalls from the Nicaraguan government and
reportedly has been reduced to asking donors (including the United States)
to pay its employees' salaries.

Finally, U.S. AID began funding its selection of international observer
organizations only at the end of the registration period in July--too late
to augment local NGO monitoring efforts during the crucial lead-in period
before the elections. Voter education and poll-worker training initiatives
are only now being organized and have little time to prepare for the
election.

In addition, local pro-democracy groups are complaining that U.S. support
for Nicaraguan NGOs has become unbalanced in favor of those with Sandinista
ties. Specifically, they claim that in 1999, the coordinating role for a
three-year project to support civil society and human rights was given to
the Nicaraguan Development Center (NDC), whose principal officers include
two former officials of the Sandinista regime. Of the sub-grantees funded by
the NDC in 2000, two thirds reportedly have Sandinista ties, including one
headed by former comandantes Jaime Wheelock, Luis Carrión, and former Vice
President Sergio Ramírez.

HOW THE UNITED STATES CAN MAKE UP FOR LOST TIME
Not only does the United States have a clear interest in promoting democracy
and the rule of law in Nicaragua, but it should also be concerned about
protecting its ongoing investment in a free society and the fragile market
economy of that nation. In the long run, it is far less expensive to aid
friendly democratic nations than it is to counter the threatening moves of
errant dictatorships.

The rationale for assisting other countries in organizing elections and
funding observer missions is to help train government officials and to
educate the public in the conduct of a fair and transparent voting system.
Such support helps to deter fraud and to document unfair or illegal
practices if they do occur. For example, electoral assistance helped Mexico
carry out the fairest contest in its history on July 2, 2000, when an
opposition party candidate was elected president for the first time in 71
years. International electoral assistance also helped Nicaragua conduct
honest elections in 1990 and 1996.

Tragically, the momentum toward a fair and open electoral system in
Nicaragua has been lost--in part because of President Alemán's self-serving
actions and the recent reluctance of the United States to do much about
them. Rather than pursue a half-hearted effort, the United States should
ensure that any assistance it provides is purposeful and effective.

In July 2001, President George W. Bush pledged $2.1 million in addition to
the $3.2 million the United States has already committed to the Nicaraguan
elections. To ensure that these resources do, in fact, promote fair
elections, Washington should:

Condition support on accountability. The Bush Administration should not wait
until after the vote to outline a new bilateral relationship with Nicaragua.
Nor should the Administration merely say it will work with anyone who wins a
clean election.
Instead, Washington should clearly urge a return to the objective of
establishing accountable government and inform Nicaragua's current
administration and this year's candidates that it will offer cooperation and
trade incentives conditioned on progress toward transparency in the
electoral process, the expansion of open markets, and respect for civil
liberties and property rights, 9 all of which have gone off course.
Conversely, any administration that ignores the will of its people, hinders
the creation of local enterprise, or tramples on the civil liberties and
property rights of its citizens should know that it will receive no
assistance from the United States.

Re-energize U.S. electoral assistance and observation efforts. The United
States should urge the Alemán government to provide provisional
documentation or extend the registration period--now closed--to facilitate
suffrage for some 300,000 rural citizens who have not yet registered to
vote. In addition, the period for delivering completed credentials should be
extended through October to allow enough time for rural citizens to receive
them.
Given the polarized nature of the Supreme Electoral Council and the
disorganized preparations for the upcoming vote, the elections could be held
hostage to partisan manipulations and acrimonious disputes. A well-organized
observer effort could minimize this possibility and give notice to local
officials that their actions will be subject to scrutiny. With the grant
money already available, the United States should ensure that its monitoring
project is extensive enough to cover rural polling stations as well as
departmental capitals and Managua itself. The capacities of such
organizations such as the International Republican Institute, the National
Democratic Institute, the International Foundation for Electoral Systems,
and local monitors such as Etica y Transparencia should be utilized to the
fullest extent possible.

Beyond these elections, the United States should also encourage reforms
establishing a nonpartisan and more efficient electoral council.

Reform the funding mechanism to improve future response. Monitors should not
have to wait until four months before elections to receive authorization to
plan their observation and training efforts. Funding decisions that are now
in the hands of U.S. AID missions overseas should be made in consultation
with the Agency's Latin American and Caribbean Bureau (LAC) in Washington
and the National Endowment for Democracy (NED). Congress should reallocate
sufficient electoral assistance funds from U.S. AID to NED to allow observer
planning efforts to begin at least a year in advance.
Additionally, grants to local NGOs should be allocated in accordance with a
principle of equal distribution when funds are awarded to organizations with
partisan links. The fact that more NGOs with Sandinista ties than other
organizations in Nicaragua are involved in electoral issues should not mean
that more funding necessarily goes to these groups.

CONCLUSION
After a considerable investment on the part of Nicaraguan democrats and
their international allies, Violeta Chamorro's presidency brought the
beginnings of a free society and a market economy to Nicaragua. Yet, as a
result of President Alemán's self-serving maneuvers, many Nicaraguans now
question what democracy has done for them.

Ironically, Alemán's bid to wield power beyond his term as president could
ultimately lead to his downfall. There is potential for a Sandinista
government to use Alemán's "reforms" to get rid of him and his party.

Regardless of who wins the November 4 presidential election or what party
dominates the contest for the National Assembly, a clean election will be
critical to Nicaragua's stability. A vote clouded by suspicion of fraud
could reduce the new president's ability to govern, promote civil unrest,
encourage capital flight, and spark new waves of migration out of the
country, negatively affecting both close neighbors and the United States.
That would compound the region's existing problems of high poverty, low
levels of education, poor infrastructure, and fragile economies.

The United States should not ignore the opportunity to help ensure that the
election process is fair and that its results reflect the will of the
Nicaraguan people. The Bush Administration should make a clear statement
regarding how it will work with Nicaragua's new leaders if they will
facilitate a return to more democratic and free-market practices so that
past gains are not lost. Finally, a strong, wholehearted observation effort
will help guarantee a clean election, reinforce habits of compromise, and
give evidence of international interest in the continued progress of
democracy in Nicaragua.

Today and thank God Bolan~os has won the Presidency