Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-lnqnp Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-25T02:51:23.094Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The 1996 Elections and Nicaragua’s Fragile Transition

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2014

Henry Patterson
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

SIX YEARS AFTER THE ELECTIONS OF 1990 FOLLOWING THE DEFEAT OF the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) which had ruled Nicaragua since it led the popular insurrection to overthrow the corrupt and dictatorial Somoza regime in 1979, the Sandinistas experienced their second bruising encounter with electoral democracy. Daniel Ortega, who as outgoing president of the republic was defeated by Violeta Chamorro of the National Opposition Union (UNO) in 1990, was once again defeated. This time the defeat was much less of a shock. Chamorro's victory in 1990 had surprised many observers despite the fact that a number of opinion polls had predicted the result. These had been dismissed by the Sandinistas as politically suspect as they had been carried out by Costa Rican organizations. Up until the opening of the FSLN's campaign in June 1996, polls had shown Ortega as the clear underdog with a gap of up to 20 per cent between him and Arnoldo Alemán, the candidate of the rightist Liberal Alliance. However, an unexpectedly cohesive and effective FSLN campaign had narrrowed the gap and by September polls were showing the two with between 38 and 46 per cent each. But, as in 1990, the ‘don't knows’ would vote decisively against the FSLN on polling day.

Type
Articles
Information
Government and Opposition , Volume 32 , Issue 3 , July 1997 , pp. 380 - 398
Copyright
Copyright © Government and Opposition Ltd 1997

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Barnes, William A., ‘Reading Nicaraguan Pre‐election Polls’, in Castro, Vanessa and Prevost, Gary (eds), The 1990 Elections in Nicaragua and their Aftermath, Savage, Md., Roman & Littlefield, 1992.Google Scholar

2 FSLN‐Liberales: empate técnico’, Envío: Reuista Mensual de la Universidad Centroamericana Managua, No. 174, September 1996.

3 ‘Como votaron los nicaragüenses’, Envío, Nos. 176–77, November/December 1996.

4 ‘The National Assembly elections differed from those of 1990 in that, for the first time, voters had to vote separately for 20 national deputies and 70 departmental deputies, the latter distributed amongst the 17 departments according to population figures. To ensure the representation of smaller parties a system of proportional representation was combined with a complicated mechanism of ‘electoral residuals’. It was this latter provision plus that which gave presidential candidates who obtained more than 1 per cent of the vote a seat in the Assembly, which produced a total of 93 deputies. Of the 24 parties who participated only 11 gained seats and the 13 who failed to do so had their legal recognition withdrawn. Butler, Judy, Dye, David, Spence, Jack and Vickers, George, Democracy and its Dircontents: Nicaraguans Face the Elections, Cambridge, Mass., and Washington, Hemispheric Initiatives, 1996, pp. 36–40.Google Scholar

5 Reyes, Virgilio Godoy, ‘Nicaragua 1944–1984: Political Parties’ in Goodman, Louis, Grande, William Leo and Forman, Johanna Mendelson (eds), Political Parties and Democracy in Central America, Boulder, Colo., San Francisco and Oxford, Westview Press, 1990 Google Scholar.

6 In the first eight months of 1993 over 300 people were killed in armed clashes involving armed bands and the army: Dunkerley, James, The Pacification of Central America, London, Institute of Latin American Studies, 1993, p. 52.Google Scholar

7 Dye, David, Butler, Judy, Abu‐Lughod, Deena, Spence, Jack and Vickers, George, Contesting Everything, Winning Nothing The Search for Consensus in Nicaragua, 1990–1995, Cambridge, Mass. and Washington, Hemispheric Initiatives, 1995, pp. 20–32.Google Scholar

8 Envío, No. 174, September 1996.

9 ‘The Two Faces of UNO’, Envio (English language edition), Vol. 9, No. 108, July 1990.

10 Saldomando, Angel, Nicaragua con el futuro en juego, Managua, Centro Regional de Investigaciones Económicas y Sociales, 1996, p. 39.Google Scholar

11 Patterson, Henry and Roulston, Carmel, ‘The Sandinistas in Opposition’, Journal of Communist Studies, Vol. 8, No. 4, 12 1992, p. 234.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

12 Lacayo, Aldo Dfaz, El Frente Sandinista despu & la derrota electoral, Caracas, Ediciones Centaur, 1994, pp. 129–31.Google Scholar

13 Barricada, 18 March 1992.

14 Sholk, Richard Stahler, ‘The Dog that didn’t Bark: Labour Autonomy and Economic Adjustment under the Sandinistas and UNO Governments’, Comparatiue Politics, Vol. 28, No. 1, 10 1995.Google Scholar

15 Castellanos, Nayar López, La Ruptura del Frente Sandinista, Mexico City, Editorial Plaza y Valdes, 1996.Google Scholar

16 Casteñada, Jorge, Utopia Unarmed; The Latin American Left after the Cold War, New York, Vintage Books, 1994.Google Scholar

17 Roger Miranda and William Ratliff, The Civil War in Nicaragua: Inside the Sandinistas, New Brunswick and London, Transaction Publications, 1994.

18 Lépez Castellanos, op. cit., pp. 133–44.

19 ‘El costo de la honestidad’, Envío, No. 170, May 1996.

20 The external debt amounted to $11,700 million in 1995 – more than six times GDP. Nicaragua was one of the worlds most indebted countries with $2,800 per capita, Aguilar, Renato, Stenman, Asa and Aguilar, Javiera, Nicaragua 1995: A New Door Might Be Opened, Stockholm, Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency, 1995, p. 13.Google Scholar

21 El Semanario, No. 306, 18–24 October 1996.

22 Butler et al., op. cit., p. 32.

23 ‘Con quién es Dios?’, El Nuevo Diario, 18 October 1996. Despite a ruling by the Supreme Electoral Council that all electoral propaganda cease on 16 October – 3 days before voting – on 17 October Cardinal Obando y Bravo gave a nationally televised mass which was blatantly anti‐FSLN and at which the readings were given by Alemin and the Liberal candidate for the mayoralty of Managua.

24 Dunkerley, James and Sieder, Rachel, ‘The Military’ in Sieder, Rachel (ed.), Central America: Fragile Transition, London and New York, Macmillan, 1996, p. 67.Google Scholar

25 ibid., p. 69.

26 Envío, No. 174, September 1996.

27 Democracy and its Discontents, p. 17.

28 Barricada Internacional, November 1996. Its editorial declared that it would be ‘immoral to accept the trickery of 20 October’.

29 Some Nicaraguan‐based observers accused the international observers of double standards in that they accepted irregularities in a Third World country about which they would have complained vigorously in Europe or the USA; see Butler, Judy, ‘Observando los observadores’, Envío, Nos. 176–177, 11 1996.Google Scholar

30 Interview in Barricada Internacional, January 1997.

31 Notifax. Noticios de Nicaragua en sintesis, 25 February 1997, [email protected] and ‘Buscando una salida? Diélogo FSLN‐gobierno liberal’, Barricada Internacional February 1997.

32 ‘Hora cero: la suerte esta echada’, Envío, No. 175, October 1996.

33 ‘El nuevo escenario nacional’, Envio, Nos. 176–177, November/December 1996.

34 Ciberdiario de Nicaragua, 24 October 1996.

35 ‘Optimismo empresarial en Nicaragua’, Diario de Hoy (El Salvador), 27 January 1997.

36 Chamorro, Carlos Fernando, ‘Los retos post‐electorales’, Barricada Internacional, 01 1997.Google Scholar

37 Ortega interview, Barricada Internacional, January 1997.

38 ‘Como votaron los nicaragüenses’, Envío, Nos. 176–177, November/December 1996.