PRESIDENT Daniel Ortega, as he went to vote in the municipal elections on Sunday, emphasised that people were voting for Nicaragua and by doing so they were also voting for peace.
In statements to the media, together with Vice President Rosario Murillo, Ortega said that ‘Nicaraguans know that this vote is a vote for peace. Beyond the party to which they cast their vote, they are voting for Nicaragua and by voting for Nicaragua they are voting for peace.’
He declared: ‘On this day, we are electing local authorities, deputy mayors, councillors, of all the municipalities of our country, both in the central zone, in the Pacific zone, in the North Caribbean zone, in the South Caribbean, in all parts of Nicaragua.’
In addition, the head of state added that thanks to the new roads that have been built, reaching places previously difficult to access, ‘surely we will have many more Nicaraguans with the possibility, not only to face the day to day, in school, in health, at work, but also the possibility of defending peace with their vote.’
The President concluded: ‘We salute all the Nicaraguan families, all the Nicaraguan youth, youth that we are sure are turning with all their hearts to cast their vote for peace in Nicaragua.’
For her part, Vice President Murillo said that these ‘sovereign elections consolidate us, contribute to consolidate peace, from a culture of peace, of democracy, of protagonism of the families, of the communities’.
She stressed: ‘Every vote, every election, in sovereignty, is a vote and an election that guarantees our national dignity and, above all, that unites us to strengthen the fight against poverty.
‘And we go forward, always further, in work, security, study, health, peace and prosperity.’
On Sunday, 3,722,884 Nicaraguans were summoned to participate in the municipal elections, according to the electoral roll issued by the Supreme Electoral Council (CSE), to elect more than 6,000 public positions, including mayors, deputy mayors and councillors.
The first hours of the municipal elections in Nicaragua took place on Sunday without incidents, according to the authorities, while highlighting the speed with which the vote was being cast.
‘We have seen the enthusiasm in all the voting centres and we hope that this will continue in this civic day, in these municipal sovereign elections,’ said the CSE president, Brenda Rocha, after casting her vote in the capital, Managua.
The elections to municipal authorities in Nicaragua began on Sunday with a big turnout, after queues were observed in the voting centres, even before they opened at 07.00hrs local time.
From very early in the morning, citizens lined up to exercise their right to vote, waiting for the opening of their respective Voting Board.
Foreign Minister Denis Moncada, one of those who came early in the morning to exercise their vote, commented: ‘It is already a tradition of Nicaraguans … to get up early to stand in line, as we are doing here.
‘There are about 20 people, citizens exercising precisely the free right to vote, to elect our municipal authorities. Mayors, deputy mayors, also councillors,’ he said.
The political organisations participating in these 2022 elections are the Constitutionalist Liberal Party (PLC), Alianza Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional (FSLN) which includes nine political parties and five movements, Partido Yapti Tasba Masraka Nanih Asla Takanka (YATAMA), Partido Alianza Liberal Nicaragüense (ALN), Partido Alianza por la República (APRE), Alianza Partido Liberal Independiente (Alianza PLI) which is formed by two political parties.
- Last Thursday, President Ortega slammed the West’s imperialists, saying: ‘The US rulers and their terrorist and sanctions policies violate human rights because they close job opportunities.
‘They violate human rights every time they mistreat Central American countries and sanction Cuba and Venezuela,’ he said, emphasising the geopolitical problems that Washington prompts around the world.
The European Union (EU) is also ‘destroying itself because they have applied so many sanctions that now they have problems even guaranteeing their own energy.
‘They have caused their own disaster while trying to destroy the Russian Federation.’
Ortega also recalled that the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) and the United States were responsible for the Ukrainian conflict because all Russia did was launch a special operation ‘so that they (the Ukraine right-wing government forces) would not continue killing’ the Russian-speaking population.
The Nicaraguan president also mentioned that the Western capitalist powers are united to destroy Russia and China because these countries represent options to end the ‘hegemonic policy’ that prevails in the current world order.
‘The era of empires has been buried forever and they must prepare to work in a multipolar world,’ Ortega stressed, adding that the international community should question the death of thousands of migrants on European shores.
The Sandinista leader criticised the lack of respect towards the African, Latin American and Asian peoples evidenced by the EU High Representative Josep Borrell, who said that ‘while Europe is a garden, the rest of the countries are a jungle’.
‘He does not say that the European wealthy garden was watered with the blood of millions of human beings,’ Ortega stressed, recalling that Europeans developed their economies ‘with wealth stolen from the African peoples.’
- A national strike was threatened in Bolivia for Monday, superficially over the issue of bringing forward a national census, but behind it is a regrouping of the right-wing forces behind the 2019 coup, now calling themselves the Bolivian Civic Movement, as well as widespread dissatisfaction over the economy, wrecked by Covid and inflation.
The last census was in 2012. A new one could increase the representation of the coupists, transferring state money and authority to them, a possibility that has led to the government allegedly dragging its feet.
While the Technical Commission on the Population and Housing Census in Bolivia is making progress – according to sources in leftist President Luis Arce’s government – the Commission said on Sunday that forces behind the coup were fomenting trouble and a strike.
Roadblocks and some violence centred on Santa Cruz have been reported. Demonstrations both for and against advancing the census have had to be kept apart by police.
‘We work in a friendly atmosphere with a fruitful technical exchange. At times it is a quite heated debate, but the general climate is pleasant, with a wide predisposition to dialogue,’ assured Deputy Minister of Planning, David Guachalla.
He reported that after the installation of the team on Saturday with the mission of defining the date of the census exercise, 350 of more than 700 activities included in the schedule of the previous stages, prepared by the National Institute of Statistics (INE), were reviewed in 10 hours of work.
He explained each activity is broken down in detail, which is why it takes time, to the extent that an approximate calculation of the time that would remain until the commission, which works by ‘time and matter’, completes its work.
The day before, Guachalla accused the rector of the Gabriel René Moreno Autonomous University, Vicente Cuellar, of looking for an excuse to leave the Technical Commission.
He based his conjecture on the behaviour of Cuellar, who, after a two-hour break, said he’d left the meeting because he had not been given the supporting documentation for the work carried out by the INE.
An hour later he returned to the Autonomous University of Beni, to deliver a letter addressed to the Minister of Development Planning, Sergio Cusicanqui.
In it, he requested a ‘simple photocopy of the itemised proposal and the complete documented schedule, prepared by the INE for carrying out the Population and Housing Census’, as well as information regarding the budget anticipated for carrying out each of the activities.
He argued these data will facilitate corrections to adjust the stages and deadlines to advance carrying out the Census in 2023, a year earlier than planned.
At the same time, in support of the threatened strike, five representatives of the unelected Bolivian Civic Movement from La Paz, Tarija, Pando, Oruro and Beni arrived in the city of Santa Cruz and met with its president, Rómulo Calvo on Saturday.
In the end, Calvo announced at a press conference that all those actors in the November 2019 coup d’état will promote a national strike starting on the Monday (November 7th) demanding that the ‘siege’ of Santa Cruz be lifted.
Santa Cruz is an economic centre, Bolivia’s principal agricultural and livestock region, where soybeans, sunflowers, sugar cane, corn, rice and wheat are grown.
