cries@mtxinu.COM (09/16/89)
/* Written 5:35 pm Sep 12, 1989 by cries in ni:cries.regionews */
/* ---------- "Nica Campaign Trail: Candidates" ---------- */
CANDIDATES
(cries.regionews from Managua September 12, 1989
237 lines 11163 bytes)
Who will be the next president of Nicaragua? Less than six
months are left before election day, February 25, 1990, and
the opposition is finally putting forward their nominations
for the man or woman to run against incumbent President
Daniel Ortega of the FSLN. The fourteen-party bloc UNO (12
registered parties plus two grouplets with no legal status)
and six other parties have named their slates for the
executive office in an election which, if opinion polls are
any indication, will see another victory for the
Sandinistas.
Not a party
The selection of the presidential and vice-presidential
candidates for the National Opposition Union (UNO) did not
turn into the "fiesta popular" that was headlined in La
Prensa on August 31. Sharp differences between the
representatives of the diverse political tendencies in the
coalition almost resulted in its breaking up.
However, after lengthy sessions, hurried consultations with
aides from the US embassy, and deals being made between the
boys in the backroom, Violeta Barrios de Chamorro emerged as
the UNO presidential candidate. Independent Liberal Party
(PLI) leader Virgilio Godoy is her running mate.
A nomination was to have been announced the night of August
31, but after five rounds of voting, a stalemate was
reached. The field had been narrowed down to three
contenders for the presidential mantle - Chamorro, Godoy,
and private sector kingpin Enrique Bolanos. But in the fifth
round, Chamorro only received seven of the ten votes
necessary to win while the other seven parties abstained.
Businessmen unhappy
La Prensa, owned by Chamorro, did its best to try to keep
the spirit of unity alive in the coalition. Downplaying the
rancor expressed by some UNO members - a PLI leader, for
example, accused Bolanos of buying votes - the newspaper
repeatedly referred to the candidacy race as "a magnificent
process of democracy."
A second session held on September 2 changed the procedure
from that of selecting a presidential candidate to one of
picking the running mate as well. In recognition of
Chamorro's broader base of support among the leaders of the
parties that make up UNO, the various formulas proposed had
her paired off with another. Although Violeta has a certain
degree of popular appeal - by virtue of being the widow of
the anti-Somoza La Prensa editor Pedro Joaquin Chamorro who
was gunned down by the dictator's agents before the
revolution - she is considered by many to be politically
inept, thereby making the position of vice all the more
important.
The final result is not to the liking of a number of parties
inside UNO which were backing Bolanos. As well, COSEP (a
right-wing private sector umbrella group which Bolanos
formerly presided over) is unhappy with the choice. At the
celebration held for Businessman's Day, September 8, COSEP
leaders did not give the UNO candidates a particularly warm
reception. Godoy had epithets hurled at him by some of the
moneymen who are critical of the fact that while he was
Labor Minister, he did not criticize the Sandinistas for the
slaying of then-COSEP president Jorge Salazar in a shootou
he had with State Security during a gun-running operation.
Now that Bolanos is out of the running, the powerful
business group appears to be taking a wait and see attitude,
but with a critical edge. Bolanos said the candidates "still
haven't shown the validity of their credentials and they are
trying to not acknowledge the legitimacy of COSEP in this
struggle."
Violeta Chamorro didn't try to convince the COSEP members of
her presidential abilities that day either. Her address to
those assembled was no more than a greeting followed by an
apology for having to go because of a "few little things"
that she had to do.
Some shakeups have already occurred inside of UNO. Leaders
of the Neo-Liberal Party (PALI) removed party president
Andres Zuniga from his post for having voted for the
Violeta-Virgilio slate rather than following the party
executive's decision to go for the Chamorro-Bolanos formula.
Zuniga's vote was key to breaking the impasse occurring
inside UNO headquarters during the debates on September 2.
Seeking a sense of proportion
More in-fighting is likely to occur when the time comes for
UNO to name its slate of candidates for elections to the
National Assembly and for the municipal races. Some parties
with a slightly broader base of support have suggested that
seats in the National Assembly be contested by the parties
running as themselves, not as the UNO coalition. Others wish
to see the seats divided among the parties in the bloc in
such a way as to avoid a situation in which the small
member-parties are disproportionately represented.
Silviano Matamoros, leader of the small but influential
Nicaraguan Conservative Party (PCN), said, "We should
preserve unity on the basis of of a fair proportion of what
each party will bring into these elections." And Ernesto
Somarriba of the tiny Constitutional Liberal Party (PLC)
declared, "We, the conservatives and liberals, which are the
parties with the largest political clientele, cannot be
treated in the same way as the minority organizations."
Two polls
To date, most everyone who is looking at things from an
electoralist point of view, sees the process as a race
between the FSLN's Ortega and UNO's Chamorro. Polls
conducted over the last year, and their results, have
contributed to this speculation. The results of two such
opinion-registering exercises were released in August and
published in the independent (of the UNO and the FSLN)
weekly tabloid La Cronica.
One was conducted by the Manolo Morales Foundation (MMF)
which has ties to the Popular Social Christian Party (PPSC),
a member of the UNO coalition. Another was performed by the
Itztani center, an independent left-of-Nicaraguan-center
thinktank.
The MMF results had the FSLN with 38.3% support for the
presidential contest. UNO, with 20.9%, came in third after
"undecided" (28.3%), while "won't vote" received 12.9%.
Regarding individual candidates, Ortega had 24.3% of those
polled supporting him while Chamorro received a meager 9.8%.
Itztani's poll registered 37% support for an FSLN candidate
while UNO supporters numbered a mere 3%. The PLI of UNO
vice-presidential candidate Virgilio Godoy came in third,
according to these results, with 4%. Itztani's poll,
however, did coincide almost exactly with that of the MMF by
giving "undecided" 28%.
This kind of number crunching by pollsters will continue
until one month before election day when it is to be
outlawed according to the agreement signed by all the
nation's political parties in early August. The campaign
period itself, given the context in which the elections are
being held, has the potential to raise this race to a level
somewhat above this run-of-the-mill juggling of figures.
Left in
A possible alliance of three left-wing parties has been
discarded. All three have named their slates for president
and vice-president. The United Revolutionary Movement (MUR),
the smallest and newest member of Nicaragua's leftist fauna,
still maintains that a tri-partite alliance would be a good
idea, but the Revolutionary Workers' Party (PRT) rejects it.
Bonifacio Miranda, presidential candidate for the Trotskyist
PRT still wants an alliance with the MAP-ML (Popular Action
Movement - Marxist Leninist) but rejects the MUR because
"it's too similar to the FSLN."
The MAP-ML, on the other hand, has decided to run alone. The
party ran in the 1984 elections and as a result of the
version of the electoral law of the day - which made
enormous concessions to minority parties in the name of
democracy - it has two members in the National Assembly
although it received a miniscule number of votes. The same
liberal provisions are still extant in the new law
regulating elections and so, from the point of view of left-
wing representation in the legislature, it is more
beneficial for each left party to run separately.
MAP-ML leader Chilo Tellez has even gone on record as saying
that his party is not running to win. He said, "What we are
offering is a pan of struggle, not even a plan of
government." The party will, and has already begun to,
campaign around such issues as workers' rights and salaries.
The MUR has Moises Hassan as its presidential candidate. He
used to be part of the five-member government junta which
ruled Nicaragua in the first years of the revolution. Hassan
says the MUR will focus its campaign on fighting
administrative corruption and government intervention in
unions and other associations and in the judicial apparatus.
Before becoming mayor of the capital, Managua until 1988,
Hassan, together with Daniel Ortega, Violeta Chamorro,
Sergio Ramirez (current vice-president), and former contra
leader Alfonso Robelo, had been one of the top leaders of
the nation. With the announcement by Robelo that he is
returning to Nicaragua in order to back the UNO bloc, all
five will be in the campaign picture, or somewhere in the
immediate background.
FSLN holding back
The ruling Sandinista party has still not named its slate of
candidates for executive office. A party conference is to be
held toward the end of September, after which the
nominations will be put on record with the Supreme Electoral
Council, the body in charge of overseeing elections
procedures.
That Daniel Ortega will be put forward for president is
virtually a given even though this will only add fuel to the
fires lit by the opposition around the issue of presidential
reelection, a touchy issue in Latin American republics.
There is, however, a rash of speculation about who will be
his running mate.
It appears as if a change is to be made in the formula.
Current Vice-president and novelist Sergio Ramirez is to be
replaced by Dr. Joaquin Cuadra Chamorro, a member of the
family ties Nicaraguan establishment, according to the MAP-
ML newspaper El Pueblo. Another rumored possibility for the
slot is Luis Carrion, father of Economy Minister, Comandante
Luis Carrion. Yet another speculation has poetess and
novelist Giaconda Belli coming in as the next FSLN candidate
for vice.
Something served by all these rumors is the idea of
promoting an image of Sandinista ability to avoid
stagnation, of FSLN dynamism, of internal party democracy. A
change, according to many in this country of perpetual
changes, is necessary. Now that the field of candidates has
been (more or less) defined, it remains to be seen what
changes are in fact on the agenda.
(We encourage feedback. Send comments, suggestions, etc. to
us via e-mail. Address cdp!ni!cries)
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