On the Caribbean coast of Nicaragua, both south and north, unusual regional elections will take place this Sunday, March 3: for the first time since these elections were introduced 36 years ago, no indigenous political party will appear on the ballot. Instead, this electorate, largely made up of indigenous peoples, will find national political groups such as the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) and four other factions of the regime of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo.
The Yapti Tasba Masraka Nanih Asla Takanka (Yatama or Children of Mother Earth in the Miskito language) party was wiped out by the Sandinista government. The leader of Yatama, former MP Brooklyn Rivera, was kidnapped by police on September 29, 2023 and remains, to this day, “in enforced disappearance due to the concealment of his whereabouts,” according to the Legal Defense Unit (UDJ). Two days later, Deputy Nancy Henriquez, president of the indigenous political organization, was arrested.
Ronald, a Miskito native interviewed by EL PAÍS on condition of anonymity, said many people in the Caribbean “do not even know about the existence of an electoral process this Sunday.” “The government has sold this as 'Winning elections in the Caribbean in 2024', but there is actually no desire in the communities to go to the polls, not only because we don't feel represented, but because this is another election circus like the general will be.” Voices. “Everything remains the same so that Daniel and Rosario maintain complete political control over the country and now over the coast,” he lamented.
Adding to the arrests of Rivera and Henriquez was the revocation of the legal status of Yatama, “the only organization with the political ability to contest votes for the FSLN on the coast,” said Miguel González, a political scientist originally from Bluefield's capital in the southern Caribbean. In an interview with Confidencial, the professor also said that the other five existing regional parties did not represent real competition for Sandinismo and the national parties.
“What is even more serious is that none of these parties compete in their own box, but rather within an alliance of national parties. There had never been anything like this in the history of the Caribbean coast […]. There are no autonomous political alternatives in which we coastal residents have the opportunity to vote. This context seems to me to be a source of great frustration, but also an expression of a violation of the autonomous rights of the Caribbean coast,” explained González.
Yatama has worked with Sandinismo in the past, but the relationship has always been strained and fell apart when Rivera criticized the government's policies toward the Caribbean coast in the chamber. After the former MP's arrest, members of the indigenous party staged protests that were suppressed by police and led to arrests.
For indigenous peoples suffering from extractivism and invasion of their ancestral territories, Yatama represented the only hope for political representation that would promote or defend some of the demands of the Caribbean coast's inhabitants. The Autonomous Regions of the Caribbean (the largest square kilometer area in Nicaragua and rich in natural resources, forests and fauna) have always been a political battleground for the major national parties.
The shadow of “fraud”
On January 3, Supreme Electoral Council (CSE) President Brenda Rocha swore in regional electoral council members and emphasized “their responsibilities” during the North and South Caribbean Coast elections. According to the latest data from the electoral body, 500,000 people are called upon to exercise their right to vote. They can contact the 751 vote reception committees in 308 voting centers, although Rocha initially spoke of 745 and 310, respectively. .
The government has used a lot of propaganda to promote these regional elections. However, the electoral observatory Urnas Abiertas warned that one of the first irregularities in the process was the election campaign calendar, which began on February 9 and ended on February 28. The exiled organization points out that it was reported in various official media that the FSLN launched an early campaign using public resources to spread a narrative that favors its candidates and the presidential couple, according to current legislation law constitutes an electoral crime.
Since the first days of January, the ruling party conducted a day of information collection through the so-called “Uniform Registration Files”. In the form, Caribbean citizens must provide contact information, current job position, work experience, academic data, socioeconomic data, party and political history, voting experience, and information about their spouses, children, parents and siblings.
Open ballot boxes have reportedly informed the population that filling out the form also serves as Citizen Verification (VC). This is an anomaly because VC is an institutional activity while the token is a party initiative promoted by Sandinismo. In addition, unlike the VC, the form does not allow specifying which voting center the person must go to in order to exercise their right to vote.
Other reports note that authorities should tell people that if they agree to fill out the form and receive the FSLN card, they can leave the country without any problem, as they must present the card at every border post to enter without any problem . In this regard, there are complaints that those who do not accept the card are threatened with losing their jobs.
On February 5, the Supreme Electoral Council released the final list of candidacies and open ballot boxes documented 47 complaints about irregularities in candidacies in 8 of the 30 constituencies and in the two autonomous regions. The main complaint is that Sandinista militants are running as candidates in the other collaborationist parties, with APRE being the party most often accused of this situation. According to Nicaraguan political scientists, these regional elections “are the final step for the FSLN to assert absolute control over all Nicaraguan authorities.”
Follow all the information from El PAÍS América on Facebook and Xor in our weekly newsletter.