By Stephen Marks

MANAGUA -- The Supreme Electoral Council (CSE) has dismissed challenges to Nicaragua's recent elections. On November 22 it formally declared Arnoldo Alemán the next president of Nicaragua and announced the composition of the 93-member National Assembly. Alemán's Liberal Alliance (AL) will have 42 seats, the Sandinista Front (FSLN) 36, Christian Way four, the Conservative Party three, and the National Project two. Six other parties will have one seat each.

However, the 42 deputies elected under the AL banner are divided among nine parties and groups. Even if he is able to hold his electoral allies together, Alemán won't have the 47 seats needed for a majority.

Meanwhile, in the outgoing National Assembly, on November 22 Alemán's supporters unsuccessfully opposed a law which gave the assembly, rather than the president, the authority to appoint the top officials of the Central Bank and the attorney general.

Either before or after taking power on January 10, Alemán will have to face up to the fact that, despite the electoral fraud, the FSLN clearly has a mass base. As well as its strong representation in the National Assembly, the FSLN will control over a third of local councils.

While Alemán has called for the FSLN to cooperate with him, he has kept quiet about what his policies will be. On November 26 the FSLN set its agenda for such cooperation; FSLN leader Daniel Ortega announced 14 points for establishing national stability and peace.

These emphasised the need "to stimulate a growth that impacts favourably on unemployment and poverty". The agenda also calls for respect for private property which, in the Nicaraguan context, means recognising the houses, farms and businesses which were transferred to workers and farmers by the revolution. It calls for resolving the problem of farmers who are losing their properties due to inability to repay bank loans.

Other points stress respect for the independence of state institutions: the army, (created after the 1979 revolution), the legislature, the auditor general, Human Rights Office and the attorney general. Social measures mentioned included attention to the problems of ex-soldiers, support for public education and health services and participation, especially from women and youth, in national decision making.

However, the first point of the agenda refers to the electoral fraud and emphasises the need for the reform of the electoral law. Ortega called on the electoral magistrates to resign.

Other criticisms continue to be directed against the CSE. This has occurred especially in relation to those seats distributed by a system of proportional representation which allocated "remainders", or votes after a party had won the quota for a seat.

The complicated new voting system used in October meant that many of the procedures were improvised by the CSE. Claims have been made by unsuccessful candidates of the Sandinista Renovation Movement that Rosa Marina Zelaya influenced the results so that her husband was awarded the one seat due to their party. The right-wing newspaper La Tribuna has also claimed that the allocation of "remainders" led to "fraud".

The FSLN's declaration also pledged that the party would continue its alliance with producers, the Nicaraguan Resistance and demobilised members of the Sandinista Army to struggle for national sovereignty and democracy.

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