By Stephen Marks
MANAGUA — Nicaragua has lived a form of virtual reality since the national elections held on October 20. Widespread accusations of fraud have delayed the final declaration of the results and the "virtual" victory of Arnoldo Alemán is based on votes that do not correspond to reality.
According to the official provisional results, released on November 8, Alemán from the right-wing Liberal Alliance (AL) "won" 904,498 votes (51%). Candidate for the Sandinista front (FSLN) Daniel Ortega was credited with 669,443 votes (37.75%), and the Christian Way (CCN) — a democratic party based on the evangelical churches — received 72,621 votes. The Conservative Party came fourth with 40,960 votes.
The parties now have three days to challenge the results. The magistrates of the Supreme Electoral Council (CSE) will then have five days to make a judgement. The FSLN has already launched a challenge and called for new elections in Managua. According to the CSE results, AL's Roberto Cedello "won" with 110,466 votes in the Managua mayoral election. The independent candidate, Pedro Sólorzano, came second with 100,089 votes, and the FSLN's Carlos Guadmamuz came third with 98,809 votes.
The official report signed by a majority of the Managua Departmental Electoral Council (CED) supports many of the accusations made by the FSLN and other parties. It even describes aspects of the conduct of the elections in this department as "chaotic". According to the report, the results from 204 of the 2,265 electoral booths in Managua, representing over 50,000 votes, have disappeared. In addition, thousands of tally sheets were lost or calculated incorrectly. In other cases, the security codes and the verification signatures on the ballot papers were not the same as those on the tally sheets for the same polling booth.
Problems have also continued to surface in other regions, especially Matagalpa. On November 6, 10 parties — the CCN, Samuel 96 Alliance, Democratic Action, Communist, Unity Alliance, Renovation Action, Independent Liberal, Sandinista Renovation, Bread and Force, and the FSLN — called for the annulment of the elections in this, the second most populous, region of the country.
The FSLN newspaper Barricada has accused the Costa Rican-based Centre of Advice and Electoral Promotion, funded by the United States International Development Agency, of having played a key role in advising certain officials of the CSE and AL on ways to obtain the desired election results.
A declaration of the FSLN national committee, the Sandinista Assembly, pointed out on November 4 that the greatest number of irregularities occurred in those CED's which were headed by members of the AL — Managua, Matagalpa and Jinotega. The same declaration indicated that it is not possible to know with certainty the real will of the voters given the magnitude of the blatant fraud.
While the CSE president, Rosa Marina Zelaya, has claimed that only "minor faults", not fraud, occurred, she has recognised that 204 of the polling booths in Managua have had to be annulled.
The Sandinista Assembly has also called for civic mobilisations to protest the electoral fraud. The first of these actions will be a mass rally at the tomb of FSLN founder, Carlos Fonseca. Fonseca was killed on November 8, 1976, by the National Guard of Anastasio Somoza, the last "Liberal" president to rule Nicaragua.