Nicaraguan local elections
 
For months the right wing opposition parties have been setting up their current  frantic efforts to destabilize Nicaragua following their candidate's defeat in the municipal elections for the capital city Managua. On Sunday November 9th municipal elections were held in 146 of Nicaragua's 153 municipalities. The latest results give the FSLN-led Unida Nicaragua Triunfa coalition  91 municipalities, including Managua. The opposition Partido Liberal Constitucionalista party has 50, the smaller Alianza Liberal Nicaraguense  party has three with two muncipalities still undeclared as of the evening of November 12th.

The victory largely reproduces the results of the 2004 municipal elections, with the Pacific Coast departments voting for the FSLN and the Atlantic Coast and central departments voting for the Liberal parties. Another six municipalities on the northern Atlantic Coast will vote in January once organization and infrastructure have been made good following the devastation caused by Hurricane Felix in 2007. The vote itself took place calmly enough, as usual, throughout the country. The aftermath has been wracked by baseless, heavily-contrived allegations of fraud and by right-wing instigated violence

The violent response of the losing right wing parties may seem strange since the  results change little in Nicaragua's local government in terms of  the balance of power. But there is a very simple reason why the right wing opposition are reacting so desperately. For the first time since the revolutionary government of the 1980s, the FSLN has defeated a united electoral front of the right wing opposition. Ever since the watershed 1990 election the right wing in Nicaragua have enjoyed structural electoral dominance. These elections have changed that reality, probably for good.

The context for right-wing desperation

After Daniel Ortega's FSLN-led coalition government took office in January 2007, it took the Nicaraguan opposition several months to work out how they might effectively undermine the FSLN government's programme. By mid-2007 they had settled on a strategy of attrition, alleging corruption and repression. The allegations of corruption focused on the government's successful poverty reduction programmes.

The Zero Hunger programme assisted low-income rural families. Zero Usury funded urban micro-businesses. Both programmes prioritized women. Streets for the People paved hundreds of kilometres of streets in neglected urban districts. Houses for the People has provided affordable housing to hundreds of low income urban families.

All these programmes were funded with assistance from Venezuela. They were funded either through credit from Venezuela's Social and Economic Development Bank, Bandes, or through the ALBA framework via the long-term credits freed up from oil purchases via the Petrocaribe concessionary energy agreement. Other programmes facilitated through ALBA  with Venezuelan and Cuban support were the Misión Milagro medical programme and the Yo Sí Puedo literacy programme.

But the Venezuelan cooperation programmes were just part of the FSLN government's overall economic plan which has focused successfully on reactivating the small and medium agricultural sectors with credits, technical support and inputs. Overall exports reached record levels in 2007 and again in 2008. For that reason the business sector in Nicaragua has worked well with the FSLN coalition government, especially with the Vice President, former Contra leader, the banker Jaime Morales. Far from foreign investment staying away as government critics predicted, it has grown steadily with large investments by companies from all over the world, including the United States.

Internationally the government has built relations not just with the main ALBA countries, Bolivia, Cuba and Venezuela, but with countries as diverse as Taiwan, Mexico, Iran, Algeria, Brazil, Russia and Libya. Nicaragua's former Foreign Minister,  Fr. Miguel D'Escoto, was elected President of the current United Nations General Assembly. Nicaragua works closely with its Central American neighbours. It maintains, currently somewhat strained, relations with Nicaragua's traditional European Union donor countries. Despite deep ideological antipathy, the government maintains surprisingly cordial relations with the United States government. Just last week the US government donated US$5 million to a programme to promote children's rights.

The nitty gritty of electoral destabilization

It seems to be precisely that startlingly successful record that has stoked desperation among the right-wing opposition in Nicaragua. In addition to the regular baseless allegations of corruption, the other twin strand of their disinformation campaign has been a persistent, shrill chorus alleging repression and threats to freedom of speech. It is hard for people outside Nicaragua to gauge the viciousness and deceit of this disinformation campaign. News is filtered through disingenuous social democrat assumptions compounded by outright falsehood and cynical set-pieces.

One such cynical set piece was the self-destruction of the opposition Movimiento Renovador Sandinista. Earlier this  year, many people were puzzled by the decision of the Movimiento Renovador Sandinista not to obey requests from the electoral authorities to comply with the rules governing political parties. In June party leader Dora Maria Tellez staged a much-publicised hunger strike to highlight the case for local and international media.

It is now very clear that Tellez and her colleagues made a deliberate decision to flout the electoral law so as to self-destruct their political party. This decision served two purposes. Firstly, it allowed them to strengthen their claims that the government is dictatorial through a disingenuous insistence that their party was unfairly stripped of its legal status. Secondly, it permitted the right-wing factions to mount a united electoral front against the FSLN with Tellez and MRS leader Edmundo Jarquin calling on their supporters to vote for right wing candidates. They hoped this would especially benefit Eduardo Montealegre, the right wing leader currently facing charges of fraud and corruption, in his efforts to win the municipality of Managua, where MRS support is strongest.

The MRS slogan all through 2008 has been "Ortega y Somoza son la misma cosa" - Ortega and Somoza are the same thing. They used explicit imagery to associate this slogan with the assassination of Anastasio Somoza by Rigoberto Lopez Perez in 1956. The cynical and sinister subliminal message has been that legitimately elected President Daniel Ortega deserved the same fate. This vicious message shoved the limits of the campaign to such extremes that less virulent but still hugely damaging accusations were made to look moderate. The paradoxical fact that the opposition decried threats to freedom of expression while at the same time publicly and feeely suggesting that the President be assassinated seemed to be lost on the national and international media.

The campaign has been facilitated by the virtual press monopoly of the Chamorro family, among the most prominent of Nicaragua's oligarchy. Chamorro family members own the two most widely read and influential national daily newspapers in Nicaragua as well as managing the influential Esta Noche and Esta Semana current affairs programmes. That media platform operates in cahoots with the country's leading television right wing channel Canal 2, whose presenters over the last few days have openly encouraged disturbances orchestrated by Eduardo Montealegre and his colleagues.

Local opposition-aligned NGOs have also played a vital role in developing the anti-government campaign, just as they did in Haiti prior to the coup against President Aristide and as they continue to do in Venezuela, targeting the government of President Hugo Chavez. Recently, the Nicaraguan government moved to prevent non-profits among those NGOs making illegal use of foreign donations to fund anti-government political activities. The Chamorro media empire combined with NGOs, foreign government representatives and right wing politicians to promote an international uproar. As if any country in the world would tolerate such blatant abuse of funds donated by foreign development agencies.

Another and related key part of the anti-government destabilization strategy in Nicaragua has been US government funded "democracy strengthening" organizations, a constant feature of US and European destabilization efforts around the world. The two most prominent of these in Nicaragua are Etica y Transparencia and IPADE. All through 2008, these two organizations deliberately set out to create an atmosphere of tension and suspicion by questioning the legitimacy of the independent electoral authority.

Ever since the FSLN government took office in January 2007 these two outfits and other non-governmental organizations have accused the government of being repressive. Etica y Transparencia has taken part in opposition marches accusing the government of being a dictatorship. IPADE has organized conferences in which participants, like Mexico's right wing ex-President Vicente Fox, supposedly invited to discuss democracy have deliberately criticized the FSLN-led Nicaraguan government along sectarian party lines.

Media lies about the latest local elections

This overall constellation of actors, right-wing politicians, opposition controlled news media, politically sectarian NGOs, and politically biased "electoral observation" outfits,  is openly supported and encouraged by foreign governments. The most important are the US government and some European Union governments. That has been the overall opposition bloc - not just the right wing political parties - facing the FSLN-led government coalition in the latest municipal elections.

Three main lies have been set running in the national and international media in relation to these latest elections. Firstly, that there were no election observers. In fact, there were around 150 electoral system professionals representing the electoral authorities of countries throughou Latin America. These observers have publicly ratified these latest elections in Nicaragua as having been free, fair and exceptionally well organized.

The second lie is that the government in Nicaragua controls the electoral authority - thus implicitly reinforcing the lie about the electoral observers by alleging that the "government rejected electoral observation". The Supreme Electoral Council is an independent power in Nicaragua and is made up of seven magistrates. Three magistrates are from the right wing opposition and three magistrates from the FSLN. The Council president currently is an individual not formally identified with any political party - but regularly accused of favouring the FSLN by the opposition and its fawning media.

The third big lie is that the violence in Managua following the elections was instigated by the FSLN.  In fact the violence in Managua on Monday November 10th resulted directly from a group of several hundred PLC supporters led by  Eduardo Montealegre who attacked individuals and deliberately provoked confrontations along the route of their march over a brief period before riot police arrived to bring things under control.

Subsequently all day Monday 10th, much of Tuesday 11th and also today Wednesday 12th, groups of Montealegre supporters have roamed Managua provoking incidents. In one incident, implausibly disavowed by Montealegre, an FSLN radio station journalist - of Radio Nuevo Ya - was stabbed seven times  was ambushed and had his vehicle set ablaze. Before the elections, by far the most serious incident in an otherwise uneventful period prior to the election was the shocking murder of an FSLN activist by a PLC supporter.

But in the international media, Monday's violence was portrayed as widespread rioting by thousands of outraged right-wing supporters. Spain's centre-right El Pais newspaper called for foreign governments to intervene. As usual, the lazy, ill-informed international media campaign is based on the false reporting of Nicaragua's local right wing media. The psy-ops nuts and bolts tweak and glint like an engine running with the hood up. The manipulation and deceitful distortion is absolutely blatant, just as it is in coverage of events in Venezuela or Bolivia.

Why?

Perhaps it may seem strange that so much outrage and uproar should be caused by some local elections that do little to change the balance of local government power in Nicaragua. But beneath the superficial irrelevance, these elections have changed fundamentally the configuration of electoral options in Central America. Now the FSLN are in a position to win the 2011 presidential elections outright - even against a united right wing opposition.

After the defeat of the Venezuelan government constitutional proposals in the referendum at the end of 2007, it seemed reasonable for the Right in Latin America to hope to recoup some of the ground lost. The local elections in Nicaragua have ruined this US and allied government script for 2008. In Bolivia, the Evo Morales government defeated opposition attempts to provoke civil war and has managed to push through a new constitution for the country, albeit somewhat weakened.

Venezuela holds local elections on November 23rd with Chavez supporters likely to do better than expected earlier in the year. In March 2009, all the signs are that the left-wing FMLN in El Salvador will win the presidential elections there. That will bring an end to almost twenty years of domination by the extreme right-wing ARENA party. Now, Nicaragua's FSLN led government can look forward to defeating a united right wing electoral coalition in 2011 and so win a second five year term so as to consolidate its current programme and become the natural party of government.

All that explains why there has been so much controversy around the latest local elections in Nicaragua. This defeat for the right wing may well lead them to ever more desperate extremes as they try and prevent the steady drift of support towards the FSLN government. It is going to be a long and difficult three years before those presidential elections at the end of 2011.