Rigged elction claims roil Nicaragua

NY Times:

As homemade mortar rounds exploded over this capital, and angry demonstrators poured into the streets for a second consecutive day, Nicaragua found itself mired Wednesday in an increasingly bitter struggle over who controls Managua and scores of other cities across the country.

Opposition leaders accuse President Daniel Ortega’s left-wing Sandinista party of rigging the mayoral race here and hundreds of other municipal races across the country in an effort to extend its political reach.

Before Election Day, Nov. 9, Mr. Ortega limited the access of outside election observers and then, his critics contend, ordered his underlings to tamper with the balloting to ensure that candidates loyal to him came out on top.

“This fight isn’t about the Managua mayoralty,” said Eduardo Montealegre, who insisted he was the legitimate winner of the mayoral race even though the Sandinista-controlled electoral council said preliminary figures indicated that he had lost.

“It’s more fundamental,” he said. “It’s about dictatorship versus democracy.”

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Mr. Ortega has remained silent. A Sandinista revolutionary who led Nicaragua in the 1980s, he was ousted in 1990. But he was re-elected in 2006 in a hotly contested race in which his closest rival was Mr. Montealegre. While Mr. Ortega won with only 38 percent of the vote, he has moved to impose his Sandinista stamp on all aspects of society.

Sandinistas clearly control the streets. For weeks before Election Day, the party’s supporters began camping out at traffic circles in what they called prayers for peace over hate. Opposition leaders saw it as an attempt to hold on to central public spaces and to limit opposition rallies.

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The Sandinistas are control freak communist who don't trust the people and certainly the people have ample reason not to trust them. They are anti freedom Marxist supported by Chavez bribes. Those resisting the phony democracy of the Sandinistas have ample reason to be suspicious.

The Washington Post has more on the mess in Nicaragua.

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Today's Sandinistas are a diluted power, struggling to uphold socialist ideals in a country that has one of the highest degrees of income inequality in the world, where half the population lives below the poverty line. Many Sandinista supporters, including much of the diminished middle class and many intellectuals, have decamped for other parties. Ortega's old comrades are now his most vociferous critics.

"As a traditional revolutionary, Ortega is into the conspiracy theory that the United States is behind all this. But the reality is he is not very popular. He is losing control, and that is dangerous," said Edmundo Jarquín, a former ally and now a leader of the Sandinista Renovation Movement, an opposition party. "He assumed he could steal the election and we would surrender."

Asked Ortega's primary objective, Jarquín replied, "Ortega."

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A drift toward the cult of personalty and ignoring failure seems to be the Ortega style. Maybe he needs some more designer sun glasses.