by Marvin J. Ramirez
Marvin J. Ramirez
(NOTE FROM THE EDITOR: At press time, the winners of the election had been decided by the Supreme Electoral Council).
Thousands of supporters of the ruling Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional (FSLN) halted an opposition march on the capital with violence and intimidation.
The violence will further discredit the government of President Daniel Ortega in its efforts to claim victory in the Nov. 9 municipal elections.
The big problem is Managua, where a recount confirmed an unlikely victory for the FSLN candidate, Alexis Argüello with 51 percent of the vote to 47 percent for opposition candidate, Eduardo Montealegre.
Across the country provisional results gave the FSLN more than a hundred of the 146 municipalities up for grabs. The vote has already been undermined by allegations of fraud and irregularities.
The opposition allegations about the elections have been franked by the Supreme Electoral Court (CSE) refusal to accredit experienced election monitors to vet the elections.
The refusal of the (CSE) to authorize electoral watchdogs to oversee the process helped create this state of confusion. Such has been the strength of criticism, the CSE agreed to a recount in Managua, fuelling suspicion of further anomalies elsewhere.
To the people of Nicaragua: if you truly love Nicaragua, you must be critical of your own government, instead of being party to its corruption. You must be guardians of constitutional order and of the nation’s international image. If Alexis truly won the election, then let Eduardo be caught in his supposed lie, proving the winner beyond a doubt. Just let him show the evidence, letting the people and the world know the truth.
But you can’t let the truth be hidden with sticks, stones and mortar because it will make you all an accomplice of the government on duty. I suggest, if you want to be free like César Augusto Sandino dreamed, not to trust the government. The government wants to maintain power at all costs, without regard to the deaths of its own people. Where it end the rights of the opposition, begin your own rights. If you deny that right to the opposition today, you are denying your own tomorrow’s rights.
All of the victories achieved when people united in revolution to dismantle the dictatorship of Anastasion Somoza on July 19, 1979, have been trampled through your servile support of the government those who blindly are usurping the rights of others to demonstrate. It is the government that needs to be servant to the sovereign individual, not the individual servant to the government.
Nobody has to beg on their knees to protest for their rights in other parts of the world, and what is happening today in Nicaragua is a shame to all of its citizens. Not allowing the opposition to present the truth of the election fraud will illegitimate the governmental structure and weaken public order. The authorities that promised to defend the Constitution when they were sworn in as public servants commit a felony crime when they allow disregard of the Constitution, violence and killing committed in front of their eyes. And to witness the commission of crimes as law enforcement officers is mandatory jail time, at least in the United States.
Television cameras testify to the manner in which the police stood by while FMLN gangs carried lethal weapons and used them against unarmed people or other armed groups who supported Eduardo Montealegre, who were also armed in the same manner.
And it is not that I am a part of any group, I just what to show both sides that we are Nicaraguans first, and secondly Orteguistas or Eduardistas. In these circumstances, the problem is in the fact that one group refuses to see the evidence possessed by the other. Yet, the issue can be solved by letting both sides put their cards on the table, without threat of violence.
