Elections in Nicaragua : prelude to a Central American Gaza?
The
final results of Nicaragua's local elections have now been declared
after much confusion caused by an unprecedented campaign of disruption
by the biggest losing opposition party, the Partido Liberal
Constitucionalista. Five political parties contested the elections. The
results for 146 municipalities give the Unida Nicaragua Triunfa
coalition led by the Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional a total
of 105 municipalities. The PLC won 37 and the smaller Alianza Liberal
Nicaragüense won 4.
The elections were held on Sunday
November 9th and passed off quietly, as is habitual in Nicaragua. But
even before the first results began to be announced, the PLC candidate
in the capital Managua was claiming massive fraud had denied him
victory. International election observers from groups representing
countries from all over Latin America contradicted that claim stating
that the elections were well-organized, free and fair.
Nicaragua's
Supreme Electoral Council is composed of the same magistrates who
oversaw the PLC presidential election victory in 2001, the municipal
elections won overwhelmingly by the FSLN in 2004 and the FSLN
presidential election victory in 2006. The Nicaraguan right-wing
parties accepted those elections without demurral. The Supreme
Electoral Council, an independent power of the State, is composed of
three magistrates nominated by the PLC, three by the FSLN and its
president, who is not identified with either party.
Following
the election the PLC opposition staged marches and protests,
deliberately provoking FSLN supporters and attacking Sandinista
journalists. In response, FSLN supporters took to the streets en
masse and forced the cancellation of various opposition marches in León
and Managua. Dozens of demonstrators from both sides, as well as
police, were injured. The announcement of the final results was made,
apparently, in part to end uncertainty after the PLC party
representatives had tried delaying tactics to extend the post electoral
count process and thus throw doubt on the elections' legitimacy.
These
municipal elections are the second time over the last two years that
Nicaraguans have served up what the imperialist powers of North America
and Europe regard as the wrong result. The national and international
propaganda response has been overwhelming. Local media, dominated by
the right wing and its social democrat allies, relentlessly attacked
the electoral authority. Their message, as usual, was taken up and
magnified many times by the international press. Spain's, El País, for
example called for foreign intervention.
Much of the
media parroted basic falsehoods. The BBC news web site and the Radio
Netherlands Worldwide web site (1), for example, both falsely reported
that the government had refused to allow election observers. A double
falsehood since the Supreme Electoral Council is independent of the
government and did in fact invite election observers from all over
Latin America via organizations of professional electoral specialists
representing the electoral authorities of around a dozen Latin American
countries - the Protocolo de Tikal group, the Protocolo de Quito group
and the Council of Latin American Electoral Experts.(2)
An
excellent example of hateful anti-Sandinista propaganda turned up on
the pages of the Independent written by John Carlin, notorious for his
fact-free coverage of Venezuela. At the centre of Carlin's piece one
finds exactly the same blatant falsehoods that figure in the rest of
the Western Bloc media's anti-Sandinista propaganda campaign. Carlin
writes ""Mr Ortega prevented international observers from overseeing
the elections and ensured that the Supreme Electoral Council was
entirely in Sandinista hands." (3)
The rest of his
article is an opinion piece regurgitating the poisonous propaganda of
social democrat soul mates who have openly allied themselves with the
right wing opposition party run by Arnoldo Aleman, the corrupt PLC
strongman convicted of multi-million dollar corruption. Almost all the
individuals cited or mentioned by Carlin, for example Sergio Ramirez,
Gioconda Belli or Carlos Fernando Chamorro, are politically, morally
and intellectually discredited inside Nicaragua among the great
majority of the population. All formerly leading Sandinistas, they are
reduced to a tiny, unrepresentative but privileged clique, serving the
propaganda needs of the local oligarchy and supportive foreign powers.
It
seems absurd that elections in a small country like Nicaragua should be
of any concern to the great imperialist powers. The contrast could
hardly be greater between the huge imperialist country propaganda
campaign on behalf of the losing Nicaraguan opposition and the studied
indifference to the vast fraud committed in Mexico in 2006. That fraud
denied Mexico's PRD opposition candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador
victory in that year' presidential election. But Lopez Obrador's
mobilization of millions of supporters for months in protest at that
blatant electoral fraud was treated with studied indifference by the
North American and European corporate media.
In fact, one
has to look beyond Nicaragua to understand the significance of the
current extraordinary international propaganda assault. Political
projects sponsored by the US government and its allies have this year
been defeated in Ecuador and Bolivia. In Venezuela next week, the
government and its allies are likely to win another overwhelming
victory similar to that of the FSLN in Nicaragua on November 9th. In El
Salvador, the left wing FMLN party is well ahead in opinion polls prior
to the presidential elections there in March 2009. If the FMLN win,
they will immediately incorporate El Salvador into the ALBA
solidarity-based trade and cooperation treaty, led by Venezuela and
Cuba.
It is an open question how far the US government
and its European allies will go to obstruct that development. One
obvious way is to send a very clear message to the El Salvadoran
electorate by cutting aid to Nicaragua on the pretext of lack of
democracy. The UK Guardian's Latin America correspondent, Rory Carroll,
reported in an article in October "Several European governments are
preparing to axe tens of millions of dollars in aid" (4) in response to
government attempts to control aid donations being channelled to an
opposition political party. To date, no such cuts have been made.
The
clearest recent precedent for such measures is Gaza. When Hamas won the
2006 Palestinian Authority elections, the US government and its
European allies refused to accept the result and worked
ceaselessly to destroy the Hamas government. Eventually, funding was
cut and Gaza was subjected to a grotesque re-enactment of medieval
siege tactics by Israel, actively supported by the governments of the
United States and the European Union. The message was clear. A
democratic vote for candidates rejected by the US and European
governments will lead to destructive measures aimed at the broader
population - in other words collective punishment, illegal under
international humanitarian law.
Now, it remains to be
seen whether the US government and its European allies will use
the bogus pretext of electoral fraud in Nicaragua to punish the
Nicaraguan people by withdrawing hundreds of millions of dollars of
development aid. If they do, the self evident intent will be to deepen
their efforts to destabilise the Nicaraguan government and to send a
very strong message to voters in El Salvador about how they should vote
next March, if they know what's good for them. It is hard to know who
are more pathetic and contemptible - the rich-country politicians and
diplomats who promote this interventionist gangsterism or the
innumerable media shills like John Carlin, Rory Carroll and their
editors who cover it up under a fact-free propaganda gloss.
Notes
1. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7721253.stm - and -
http://www.rnw.nl/internationaljustice/news/international/6046503/Mass-rioting-
after-Nicaragua-local-elections
- these reports may have been corrected now since I complained about the
falsehoods to the site editors
2. http://www.radiolaprimerisima.com/noticias/41356
3. "Nicaragua: Betrayal of the revolution", John Carlin, Independent 21/11/2008
4. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/oct/14/humanrights-voluntarysector