The Herald of a Coming Dictatorship: Nicaragua’s Municipal Elections

Force and fraud are in war the two cardinal virtues.
Thomas Hobbes

Democracy will be overthrown with the tools of democracy.
Adolph Hitler

The spirit of democracy is not a mechanical thing to be adjusted by abolition of forms. It requires change of heart.
Mohandas Gandhi


Barack Obama’s victory gave the world a sterling example of the merits inherent in the democratic process when it approximates perfection. The consensus and community building of the democrat’s campaign were remarkable—a lesson for politicians everywhere. Today few can question that when elections are honest, creative, and open, humankind is better for it. That, in large part, is why much of the world rejoiced upon learning the results of the elections and wished the United States well as it enters an uncharted era with hope and enthusiasm.

Yet only a few days after Obama’s resounding victory, in a dastardly plot Daniel Ortega hatched with the help of his cronies—a stratagem that went largely unnoticed because of the riveting US electoral year—democracy suffered a disheartening defeat in Nicaragua’s municipal elections.

The blatant fraud that took place on Sunday, November 9, started taking shape months ago. The first sign for alarm appeared in May of this year, when the members of the Sandinista-controlled Consejo Supremo Electoral—the institution charged with safeguarding the legitimacy of elections—canceled the participation of the Movimiento Renovador Sandinista and the Partido Conservador, claiming that they had failed to meet the deadline to submit their plans for internal restructuring (a claim both parties still maintain was false). With this move, Daniel Ortega and his associates eliminated the two political parties most likely to draw away the votes of potential Sandinista sympathizers.

Then, when José Miguel Insulza, Secretary General of the Organization of American States, publicly expressed his concern over the measure, Ortega countered in a speech replete with passionate, nationalistic rhetoric that outside interference in Nicaraguan affairs would not be tolerated. He went on to suggest that international electoral monitoring organizations, such as the well-respected Carter Center (which has supervised every Nicaraguan election since 1990, including the one Daniel Ortega won two years ago), would not be allowed to observe the balloting. And only a week before votes were scheduled to be cast, Rosa Marina Zelaya, former president of Nicaragua’s Electoral Council, expressed that it was “lamentable and distressing” that the current Council had failed to accredit reputable international observers to verify the results.

In light of these events, then, the chaos and violence that followed the announcement of the landslide Sandinista victories in the municipal elections, including the much disputed mayoral race in Managua, is not surprising. And at present, Ortega’s “turbas”—gangs of unschooled adolescents armed with baseball bats, stones, and under the supervision of Sandinista elders—are roaming the streets of many Nicaraguan communities intimidating the opposition. These swarming harbingers of fear have been Daniel Ortega’s most effective response to dissension since the early 1980s—the height of the Sandinista Revolution.

Within the Sandinista party—of which Daniel and his wife, Rosario Murillo, are the undisputed rulers—democracy long ago ceased to exist. One only needs to heed the words of internationally respected Nicaraguan writers—such as Sergio Ramírez, Gioconda Belli, and Ernesto Cardenal, among others—all former Sandinista stalwarts, who for years have been trying to alert the world that under Daniel Ortega’s reign democracy in Nicaragua is only a few heartbeats away from its demise.

But as the world celebrated democracy at its best following Barack Obama’s election, the abuses taking place in Nicaragua have gone largely unnoticed. With the exception of a few European nations that are withholding financial aid to Nicaragua, Daniel Ortega's maneuvers to remain in power far longer than the current constitution allows have gone uncontested in the international arena.

In the early 1980’s, when the Sandinista Revolution enjoyed great support throughout the world, the former Comandante of the Revolution said in an interview: “We (Nicaraguans) grew up in a situation where we didn't know the meaning of freedom or justice, and therefore we didn't know a thing about democracy.” At the time his pronouncement seemed harmless—the quaint thought of a young, perhaps even innocent, leader of an impoverished and long-suffering nation that was in the process of reinventing itself. Today, however, Ortega fully understands how the democratic process works, and aware that his approval rating among his people is abysmal, he has opted to take a page out of the Third Reich’s playbook and use the tools of democracy to bring about its downfall in Nicaragua.