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Discussion with Phil Stuart about the national elections on November 6th, some comments on the recent psy-warfare article for the Heritage Foundation by Robert Callahan and Ray Walser and a guess about how the seats will be distributed in the National Assembly.

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(We have corrected the notes below because we made a mistake in our discussion of the allocation of national deputies. See our apology at : http://tortillaconsal.com/tortilla/node/10125)

Lawrence Fisk has suggested that some additional comments may help people understand better the reality of this election in Nicaragua. So for what they're worth here are some considerations that may be useful.

Right now the FSLN and its allies already have a de facto majority over the combined right wing. If the right wing were united now they would still not beat Daniel Ortega for the Presidency. What they might be able to do is prevent a Sandinista-led coalition majority in the national assembly as a result of cross-voting because as Phil Stuart pointed out in his comments, many people will vote for Daniel nationally but may well prefer a local Liberal candidate over the local FSLN candidate. Therein lies the stupidity of the right wing's failure to unite because, with the right wing divided, the FSLN and its allies have a very strong chance of taking more seats in the National Assembly than they otherwise might.

Of the total of 92 deputies (two seats are reserved for the former President and Vice-President) and there are 20 national deputies voted in on the basis of their party's share of the presidential ballot. So there are 70 deputies up for grabs depending on the votes polled by each party for the Presidential part of the ballot. If  the FSLN's Presidential candidate gets  55% of the vote then the FSLN party will get 11 of the national deputies. So they'll need to get  around 10 or 12 more departmental deputies to increase the 38 seats they won in 2006 to a total of 48-50 to secure an overall majority in the national assembly.

I think they'll do a bit better than that. I think they'll get between 50 to 55 seats. It will be be extremely surprising if the Alianza Nicaragua Triunfa fail to secure the 47 deputies they need for a majority. In fact I think I am being conservative, they may well take the Alianza Nicaragua Triunfa vote very close to the magic 57 votes needed to change the constitution which the FSLN may well end up being able to do in any case via a post-election deal with the PLC.

What will most likely happen is that the PLC and the PLI will slug it out for most of the opposition vote. In the new legislature of 2012, the PLC will be faced then with the prospect of losing its quotas of power in the Electoral Authority and in the Supreme Court etc. It will be extraordinary if there is not some new bipartisan deal between the liberal-nationalist PLC and the revolutionary-nationalist FSLN to vote for new authorities in the various powers of State. That new bipartisan accord will almost certainly include agreements on constitutional reform.

Phil has also correctly pointed out in conversation that even many lifelong Liberals are giving up on leaders like Fabio Gadea, Eduardo Montealegre and Arnoldo Alemán because they feel lied to after seeing the benefits of a Sandinista-led government and having experienced 17 years of neglect under the governments of Violeta Chamorro, Arnoldo Alemán and Enrique Bolaños. I also agree with Phil there has been a historic change in the political feeling of former Contra communities who are now prepared to support the FSLN and that too is great cause for optimism.

Conversely, the negative factors affecting Gadea and Montealagre are their refusal to negotiate a united opposition deal with Arnoldo Aleman or Enrique Quiñonez and the kiss of death of the MRS who now barely represent 1% of the electorate. The decision by Montealegre to go into an alliance with the MRS will very likely come to be seen as one of the most crass political decisions ever witnessed anywhere, ever. That is why I think Arnoldo Aleman's PLC will poll more votes than Gadea's Alianza PLI.

And that is why I am optimistic that the FSLN will win between 3 - 7 extra deputies at departmental level. The divided opposition vote will have the same effect now that it had in the municipal elections of 2008 where, although in theory Arnoldo Alemán's PLC was working together with Eduardo Montealegre's ALN, in practice the PLC applied what I call the Serpico routine. At crucial moments, ALN protagonists received no back up from their supposed PLC allies. That was one of the main factors that lead to the historic FSLN wins in those 2008 municipal elections. Now we will see that effect magnified in the national elections this year via the right wing's outright division.

So we can expect a vicious "fraud" backlash from Fabio Gadea and Eduardo Montealegre's PLI Alliance with probably somewhat tepid backing from Arnoldo Alemán's PLC and the ALN of Enrique Quiñonez. Both of those groupings will take great satisfaction from another debacle for the perennial loser Eduardo Montealegre along with Edmundo Jarquin and the other ex-sandinistas of the MRS.

Another complication is the likelihood of a damaging ruling by the Corte Suprema de Justicia on the several administrative complaints brought by dissident PLI activists against the PLI over alleged breaches of the party's constitution prior to the registration of the Alianza PLI with the Supreme Electoral Council. This situation results from alleged abuse of the PLI's internal rules by the faction of the PLI that allowed Eduardo Montealegre and his colleagues to use the PLI as their electoral vehicle after they lost control of the ALN.

The post electoral period is likely to be extremely vicious and volatile as the right wing political parties take in the scale of the historic defeat they seem destined to suffer.