criesdif@mtxinu.COM (10/10/89)
/* Written 3:02 pm Oct 9, 1989 by criesdif in ni:ni.centam-elect */
/* ---------- "Nica: Gearing Up For Elections" ---------- */
NICARAGUA: SETTING UP TO VOTE
(ni.centam-elect 253 lines)
Taken from the monthly magazine "Envio".
August 25 marked the official opening day of the
Nicaraguan electoral campaign. The opposition parties began
their 30 minutes per day of television space on Channel 2;
the United Nations Elections Verification Commission
officially opened its offices; the Supreme Electoral Council
continued its civic education courses and debate about
possible opposition presidential candidates went on.
UNO, the uneasy coalition of twelve opposition
political parties [and two unregistered parties], chose its
presidential and vice presidential candidates after days of
debate and over ten rounds of internal voting. Violeta
Barrios de Chamorro was finally picked as the presidential
candidate, and Virgilio Godoy of the Independent Liberal
Party as the vice-presidential candidate. UNO's political
platform, a watered-down piece that the parties from the
widely-varying ideological spectrum could live with, had
already been hammered out the week before.
Other presidential candidates have been announced as
well: MoisEs HassAn, a former FSLN member, will run on the
Revolutionary Unity Movement ticket; Erik RamIrez for the
Social Christian Party; Eduardo Molina for the Democratic
Conservative Party; Rodolfo Robelo Herrera for the
Independent Liberal Unity Party (PLIUN); Bonifacio Miranda
for the Revolutionary Workers' Party; and Blanca Rojas for
the Central American Unity Party. Three parties--the
Conservative Social Party, the Popular Action Movement and
the FSLN--have not yet registered their presidential and
vice presidential candidates. Assuming all three parties
register by the September 24 deadline, Nicaraguans will be
faced with ten candidates when they go to the polls next
February. Of the eight opposition parties outside of UNO,
the PLIUN, PUCA, PCD and PSC tend to the center, the MUR,
PRT and MAP-ML are to the left of the FSLN, and the
Conservative Social Party, led by Fernando AgUero, a former
Conservative leader, has not put forward either candidate or
platform.
Civic Education: Democracy on the Ground
Other preparations are moving forward as well,
primarily in the area of civic education. The Supreme
Electoral Council (CSE) has put into practice a vigorous
schedule of civic education workshops around the country,
with the goal of training at least six officials for each of
the more than 4,100 polling places, as well as scribes and
poll watchers, all by the first day of registration on
October 1. This ambitious project began in late July with a
six-day workshop for over 100 people from ten political
parties. Workshops were then conducted in the nine regions
of the country during the last two weeks of August. At the
Region VI workshop held in Matagalpa (split into two because
of the overwhelming participation), the 80 or so
participants met from Friday through Sunday evening. The CSE
is offering the workshops to all interested participants and
potential poll watchers. Under the National Dialogue
agreement signed in August, political parties can train
their own poll watchers as well, though the CSE trainings
are open to all and all parties are encouraged to attend. A
recent workshop held in Managua was attended by almost 1,000
people.
Many of the participants in the "Regional Workshop on
Civic Education and Electoral Preparation" from Region VI
were teachers. Two to six people from each town in the
region (more from the provincial capitals of Matagalpa and
Jinotega) attended the three-day event, representing five
opposition parties as well as the UNO alliance. Observers
from the United Nations who attended a similar workshop near
Managua noted that people from all political persuasions and
backgrounds attended and participated actively.
The agenda was impressive in its attention to detail
and its commitment to educate every member of the workshop.
There were two working documents: one, the electoral law
itself with its modifications from the National Dialogue,
and the other, samples of the forms to be used in the
registration and voting process. The participants divided
into small groups to go over almost every clause of the
electoral law, focusing on those issues most pertinent to
the voting officials--who is able to register, what is
needed to prove identity, the role of poll watchers, the
choosing of election officials and their responsibilities,
among others. Every detail had to be clear, including what
to do if a name is written incorrectly--write over it?
white it out? cross it out and put the corrected name into
the next line? (the last one is correct, and a form is
provided to note such irregularities).
Lively debate took place when the groups looked at the
section in the law saying that "Nicaraguan citizens have the
obligation to register in their respective voting centers."
"Does this mean there is a punishment for not registering?"
asked one person. "How can there be an obligation with no
consequences?" A lawyer attending the workshop as an
advisor pointed out that the obligation is a self-
sanctioning one. "If you don't fulfill your civic duty to
register," he noted, "you forfeit your ability to choose
your leaders, thus punishing yourself." He clarified that
the government had no authority to punish or fine people for
not registering to vote.
The three-day workshop also included role playing to
practice setting up the voting tables, using the appropriate
forms, and clarifying all details of the registration
process. In addition to sample forms, the civic education
manual used for the role-playing section includes lists of
all necessary materials for the registration table, a
drawing of the table itself, as well as sample pictures of
voting lines, positions for poll watchers and the posting of
registration lists to check for inaccuracies. No question of
the registration and voting process was left unanswered.
The 80 people trained in Matagalpa came from WiwilI,
CuA-Bocay, San Rafael, Pantasma, La Concordia, Jinotega and
Matagalpa. They will return to their communities to carry
out smaller-scale workshops using the skills learned over
the three days. In Jinotega, according to the recently-
approved municipal divisions, there will be 65 voting
centers.
Observer Commissions Set Up Shop
The United Nations Elections Verification Commission
(ONUVEN) celebrated its official opening on August 25,
though observers had arrived in the country some weeks
before. ONUVEN states as its purpose:
-To verify that the political parties have
representation on the CSE, the nine Regional Electoral
Commissions and the 4,100 municipal election boards;
-To verify that the political parties are free to
organize and mobilize;
-To verify that Electoral Registers are correctly done;
-To promote the development of the process, the Commis-
sion will pass all irregularities and complaints to the CSE;
-To send reports to the Secretary General who will then
inform the CSE.
Within the first two weeks of beginning their
observation process, UN teams had traveled to Bluefields,
Puerto Cabezas, San Carlos, LeOn and Juigalpa, as well as
attending the Region III civic education workshop. Mario
Zamorano, spokesperson for ONUVEN, said that all parties
have been helpful in these initial weeks, ranging from their
official counterpart, the Supreme Electoral Council, to
government officials, political parties and other community
leaders. ONUVEN observers plan to attend all public
demonstrations and monitor access to state media by all
parties.
ONUVEN is in a fairly unique position because it is the
first time that the United Nations has ever been asked to
observe elections in a sovereign state and member of the UN.
The decision to participate in this manner was clearly
influenced by the regional events set in motion by the
Esquipulas Accords, giving the UN General Secretary the
assurance that the region is committed to peace, and thus
that ONUVEN's goal would have a reasonable chance of
success. "ONUVEN's mission is to help the Nicaraguans to
achieve peace and national reconciliation," noted Zamorano.
"Ours is a moral power rather than an executive power," he
continued. "We have the moral power given us by the
international community."
Whether the international community, particularly the
United States, will respect ONUVEN's conclusions remains to
be seen. While the United States formally withdrew its
recognition of the International Court's 1986 ruling on the
CIA mining of the Nicaraguan harbors and has thus paid no
damages, in this case it has not protested the ONUVEN
commission. ONUVEN's presence in Nicaragua is based on its
understanding of the international commitment to respect the
moral authority vested in it.
********************
NICARAGUA: POLLS SHOW FSLN AHEAD
One important result of August's National Dialogue was
the approval of opinion polls around the elections. Any
organization may carry out an opinion poll up to 30 days
before the election, providing that it is published with the
methodology and exact questions included. The last month
before the elections no opinion polls are allowed.
Various organizations have been publishing opinion
polls since last December--among them Itztani, a Managua-
based research organization, and the weekly newspaper La
CrOnica, associated with the Popular Social Christian Party.
Itztani conducted a poll in late July, before the National
Dialogue and Tela, and La CrOnica conducted one in early
August, just after.
Both of the polls show that support for the FSLN has
increased from 29% (in an April La CrOnica poll) to 38% most
recently. Measuring recent UNO support as compared with
April presents some difficulties because UNO did not form
until late June and only submitted a formal request for
legal recognition as an alliance in early September. April's
poll did, however, measure support for a hypothetical
opposition bloc at 36%. In contrast, UNO received 3% support
in the recent Iztani poll and just over 20% in the recent La
CrOnica poll. The decrease in support for an opposition bloc
can be attributed in part to the relative newness of UNO on
the political scene, but is also clearly a result of recent
events that have left UNO without a clear policy: the
successful July 19 anniversary, the lowering of the
inflation rate, the National Dialogue and the Tela Accords.
While the FSLN has made political advances, UNO has put out
mixed messages, with some members less than pleased with the
results from the National Dialogue that legitimized the
elections some may have wanted to boycott.
All polls taken thus far register somewhere between 20
and 30% of the population who do not know who they will vote
for, a significant chunk of the population toward whom both
the FSLN and the opposition parties will have to direct
their campaign. No significant change in undecided was
registered from April to August.
Ten Minutes on the TV Soapbox
Future polls are certain to chart changes in the
electorate, especially as the political parties begin to
campaign in earnest. The television pieces by each party
began August 25 and will continue nightly. The 30-minute
block is divided into three ten-minute slots, with the 21
parties (including the FSLN) rotating nights. UNO, which has
only recently been legalized, now gets one slot, not each of
the member parties' 12 slots. Noted one foreign observer,
"The parties should never have asked for so much time on
television. Who wants to watch politicians droning on for 30
minutes? What they need are 30-second prime time slots."
Instead, most of the nightly presentations scream out
their lack of campaign sophistication. With three parties
appearing nightly, each party is on about every eight days.
Some parties sit one or more people in front of the camera
with a microphone, who spend the entire ten minutes
explaining their views or programs--usually in a monotone.
It can be expected that US advisers and money will soon be
brought to bear on this "talking heads" format.
A number of parties suffer from poor name recognition,
especially those who only chose their names in June when
requesting legal status. In the La CrOnica poll, when asked
which party they would vote for with no names given at all,
all the opposition parties together only received 10%.
People simply do not know the names of all 21 legal parties.
While the nightly television programs may contribute to name
recognition, clearly the UNO alliance, given the priority La
Prensa gives it and the money in the wings from the Bush
Administration, will overshadow smaller parties who have
chosen to put forward their own platforms and candidates.
**************
"Envio" is a monthly magazine of analysis on Nicaragua,
published by the Central American Historical Institute in
Managua. Subscriptions available for $27 from CAHI,
Intercultural Center, Georgetown University, Washington D.C.
20057, USA.
---
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