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Countrywide population in Nicaragua is 4.8 million. More than 1.8 million is under the voting age of 16. In presidential and congressional elections scheduled for late October or early November, scarcely 3 million voters will be able to choose from at least 22 national political parties (one more is being created as this column is being written), which works out to one party for each 132.000 Nicaraguans.
Nevertheless, one can try to make some sense out of this. Nicaraguans do by eventually working out alliances. Thirty-five political parties participated in the 1996 elections, but most ran as part of one of five electoral coalitions. With nearly 52 percent of the vote, the Liberal Alliance, a mainly conservative coalition of five political parties and factions of another two, won the presidency, a plurality in the national legislature and a large majority of the mayoral races. The leftists Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) ended in second place with 38 percent. Most other parties fared poorly. A new political party, the Nicaraguan Christian Path (there are five Christian Democratic parties, none recognized by the Brussels-based world organization of Christian Democratic Parties), ended a distant third with 4 percent of the vote and four seats in the 93-member National Assembly. The traditional alternative to the Liberals, the National Conservative Party, ended in fourth place with slightly over 2 percent of the vote and three seats in the National Assembly. The remaining 24 parties and alliances together obtained less than 5 percent of the vote. Seven of these smaller parties control eight seats in the National Assembly (there are 19 parties represented in the National Assembly independently or as part of an alliance). Only two of 145 mayors belong to third parties.
Daniel Ortega, the leftwing former leader of Nicaragua, will run for president a fourth time in November after winning primary elections for his Sandinista party amid allegations of irregularities. Early results show Ortega, 55, who has led the Sandinistas through revolution, war and peace for more than 20 years, comfortably beat off two reformist challengers.
However, in the surrealistic political environment that prevails in Nicaragua, Ortega found it necessary to meet with John Keane, who heads the U.S. Department of State mission overseeing the elections, to explain that his party's primary election has been fair and clean and to state that there is a possibility that a future Sandinista administration could help in solving the conflict about property rights-there are still properties taken over by the Sandinistas that have not been returned to their legitimate owners-and work out collaboration mechanisms for the fight against drug trafficking.
Apart from two small religious parties and one backing the long-departed Somozas (the dictatorial dynasty that ruled until 1979), the Conservatives, a middle-class party traditionally opposed to the Liberals, have won the right to participate in the elections. Pedro Solorzano, the young party president, is a favorite for the nomination.
Joaquin Cuadra, former chief of the Sandinista armed forces and leader of his own political movement, said he would also contest the election but favors as candidate Violeta Chamorro, the former president. She defeated Ortega in 1990 and pacified the former contra fighters. His victory sets up a potentially destabilizing battle against Bolaņos, Liberal President Arnoldo Aleman's favored successor.
"She saved Nicaragua before, she could do so again," said Cuadra. "We want neither Sandinistas nor Somocistas and she may be the only one who could win."
Doņa Violeta, as she is universally known, has refused so far to return to politics but recently made a speech that sounded suspiciously like campaigning. Nicaraguans were victims of the "capricious whim of two caudillos", she said, denouncing Ortega, Aleman and their "oppressive pact," adding that "Nicaragua cannot continue another five years along the dark and twisted path it has taken since 1997," and that the political system had "fallen prey to corruption and personal gain."
Bolaņos, in his seventies, is a diehard opponent of the Sandinistas and supported the U.S.-backed "contra" war against them from 1979 to 1990. He remained in Managua throughout that period despite being close to Anastasio Somoza, the dictator toppled by the Sandinista guerrilla movement in 1979. He was jailed and remains a figure hated by the left but was expected to win the Liberal Constitution party primary.
The two big parties-the conservatives in power and the Sandinistas-hold a near-monopoly on politics in spite of their internal divisions. A so-called pact between them in January, 2000, consolidated their control. Important institutions of state were divided among their political appointees, and the electoral law was changed to make it harder for parties to qualify.
The Carter Center, the human rights and election monitoring organization founded by former U.S. president Jimmy Carter, says the law is the most restrictive in Latin America. The parties also lowered the proportion of votes needed to win the presidency outright in the first round to 35 per cent-which would make an Ortega victory possible-and allowed former presidents immunity from prosecution by making them congressmen for life.
Many in Aleman's circle face corruption allegations and Byron Jerez, his tax chief, was forced to step down because of claims of financial irregularities. Others, such as former foreign minister Eduardo Montealegre, who is also running for the Liberal party nomination, have criticized corruption and the pact.
Apart from two small religious parties and one backing the Somozas, only the Conservatives, a middle-class party traditionally opposed to the Liberals, have won the right to participate in the elections. Pedro Solorzano, the young party president, is favorite for the nomination.
Silvio Mora, Ortega's campaign chief, said a reformed Sandinista party could unite the country: "Times have changed. Our policies have changed. The US is now our friend, not our enemy," he said.
Yes. Nicaraguans also find it confusing.
Claudio Campuzano (claudio-campuzano@hotmail.com) is U.S, correspondent for the Latin American newsweekly Tiempos del Mundo and editorial page editor of the New York daily Noticias del Mundo. He writes weekly for World Tribune.com