Quedate en Casa: Commentary on the November 7 Nicaraguan Elections. The opposition called for a boycott of the November 7th election by adopting the pandemic phrase, “quedate en casa” or “stay at home.” According to the Nicaraguan Supreme Electoral Council there was a 65% voter turnout. The independent Nicaraguan group Open Ballot Boxes tracked voting in 536 polling stations (there were a total of 13,455 polling stations throughout the country) and determined that voter turnout was 18%. The truth is somewhere in between but the fact remains that the only way to protest the predetermined election outcome was to “quedate en casa.”
Nicaraguans “elected” Daniel Ortega to a 4th consecutive term as President. Ortega “officially” received almost 76% of the vote. Walter Espinoza of the Liberal Constitutionalist Party (PLC) finished second “officially” with a little more than 14% of the vote. President Ortega jailed or placed under house arrest the seven major opposition candidates including Christiana Chamorro, the daughter of former President Violeta Chamorro. He jailed or exiled major opposition figures, hundreds of others, and the Director of La Prensa, the only remaining opposition newspaper since the closing of El Nuevo Diario two years ago. La Prensa quit publishing a print version of its news in August because Ortega does not give the company access to the necessary paper. He exiled former FSLN revolutionary and author, Sergio Ramirez, for writing and publishing a fictionalized account of the 2018 mass demonstrations Tongolele No Sabia Bailar. Ortega banned 24 civic organizations, in particular, medical guilds that had been critical of Ortega’s mishandling of the COVID pandemica.
While there were five candidates running against Ortega, all represent FSLN aligned parties. Ortega’s party, the FSLN, claimed 75 of the 91 seats in the National Assembly and 15 of the 20 seats that Nicaragua has in the Central American Parliament. There were no international election observers in the country. The US and the EU have placed sanctions on the government, government officials, and the Ortega family and have promised more sanctions but these will have little to no effect on the election outcome nor change the populist authoritarian government. Sanctions against Ortega are like the US embargo against Cuba, they only give the ruling authorities an excuse for their failures and an external force to blame.
It is important to keep in mind that most Nicaraguans, beyond the 20% secure base of FSLN supporters, have shown little to no support for the traditional conservative parties in the country. An October Gallup poll found that 77% of Nicaraguans do not feel represented by any political party in the country (see William Robinson, Distinguished Professor of Sociology, Global, and Latin American Studies at UC Santa Barbara).
See also my essay “Daniel Ortega and Populist Authoritarianism in Nicaragua” in this blog dated July 26th of this year and my book The History of Nicaragua (2010) for more historical information. Any mistakes of facts in this essay are mine.
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