Ortega’s FSLN Wins Local Elections Throughout Nicaragua

By Circles Robinson

HAVANA TIMES – After a lackluster campaign with virtually no legal opposition, the candidates of the FSLN party, of the presidential couple Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo, swept to victory Sunday as expected throughout the country.

In the latest vote count statistics released on Monday afternoon by the Supreme Electoral Council (CSE), in some cities like the capital, almost all the votes went to the official candidates and their allies. According to the CSE, the FSLN received 87.6% of the votes in the city of Managua to 5.5% for its ally the Liberal Constitutionalist Party (PLC). Six other small parties accounted for the rest.

In all, the FSLN won 135 mayors races of the 153 municipalities in the country. They swept to victory even in many traditionally anti-Sandinista cities and rural areas. The PLC, led by former president Arnoldo Aleman, was assigned the city halls of 11 rural municipalities and the Citizens for Freedom party (CxL) of supporters of Eduardo Montealegre ended up with a total of six.

According to Roberto Rivas, the decades long president of the CSE, 2.1 million or 51.74% of the registered voters went to the polls.

With 98.07% of the votes counted Rivas said that  nationwide the Ortega-Murillo party obtained 68% of the vote. Aleman’s PLC obtained 16% of the overall vote and the CxL, 9.53%.

Voting day was relatively calm and marked by a high level of abstention, unusual when Nicaraguan elections have been competitive. The main exception was the violence and five deaths occurring in the municipality of Rio Grande in the South Atlantic Autonomous Region.

On the day after the elections there was also considerable violence in the city of Bilwi (Puerto Cabezas) between supporters of the FSLN and the indigenous party Yatama.  Several buildings and cars were reported burned.