Open Polls: Voter abstention reaches 82.7% in municipal elections

The civic observatory Urnas Abiertas (Open Polls) reported a municipal elections voter abstention rate of 82.7% on election day, this past Sunday, November 6. This level of abstentionism exceeds the 81.5% observed in the "electoral farce" of 2021. 

Ligia Gómez, spokesperson for the electoral observatory, said that the information was calculated based on data received from 366 Voting Centers across Nicaragua, where citizen participation reached a meager 17.3%.

The statistics have a margin of error of +/-5% and a confidence level of 95%, according to Open Polls, a multidisciplinary group of experts and volunteers.

The decision by the majority of Nicaraguan citizens to not go to the polls so as not to legitimize the electoral farce staged by Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo represents a new defeat for a regime that used all the coercive power of the State to create the perception of legitimacy and failed, according to electoral experts and political leaders, interviewed on the program Esta Semana (This Week). 

The dictatorship tried to legitimize the continuation of its rule over almost all the municipal governments in the country, using various acts of coercion, abuse of state property, kidnapping of 19 citizens, and other tactics. These government-party administrations will remain in power, but the high rate of abstentionism that was observed is evidence that the majority of voters reject this scheme. 

"The citizens refused to legitimize this process, but that is what the dictatorship so urgently needed", said Juan Diego Barberena, member of the Political Council of the National Blue and White Unity (UNAB), as he analyzed the new "round of massive abstention, in which Ortega’s government and method are the big losers". 

Barbarena’s conclusion is that "they cannot claim to be triumphant", referring to the international isolation and perception of utter illegitimacy that befell the regime after last year's presidential elections and the current municipal elections. He insisted that the regime "lacks popular legitimacy", particularly after it took away the Nicaraguan people's right to decide and elect.

In Barberena's opinion, the November 6 turnout once again demonstrated that the regime is unable to mobilize not only the large number of voters it needed to be able to photograph them at the polling places, but they also had trouble mobilizing even their own supporters, both this year and last year. He said this same phenomenon has been seen at the celebrations of political anniversaries and other events that used to be massive. 

Héctor Mairena, also a member of the Political Council of the UNAB, emphasized that "Ortega's government comes out of this vote without any legitimacy" and that the civic rejection in 2021, which "led the international community to quickly repudiate and disqualify that process", will also serve to confirm that the local governments that emerge from this electoral farce "lack all legitimacy".

Even threats couldn’t get them 'the photo' 

This time, once again, the abuse of state resources --including a monopoly on enforcement-- proved insufficient to mobilize voters, despite the multiple threats made against each target group.

Olga Valle, director of Urnas Abiertas, said that the observatory’s presence in at least 148 of the 153 municipalities of the country, allowed them to confirm the constant "outright pressure" from government institutions towards public employees, including their family members of voting age.

It was a system of "total surveillance", in which voters were being monitored from checkpoints near the voting centers, in neighboring houses, or even from portable canopies set up with chairs so the monitors could see who arrived to vote. All this was a continuation of the system of threats implemented in the days leading up to election day. 

Valle said that this system of intimidation included small and medium-sized business owners being told they could lose their operating permits if they did not prove they had voted. Students were threatened with losing their right to an official ID card. Others were told they wouldn’t be able to obtain a passport. 

Barberena expanded on that list, describing threats of future refusals to grant required police records, health certificates, or permits to sell liquor. Business owners were also threatened with not being eligible to be government suppliers. He considers this kind of intimidation "an act of desperation in an attempt to get greater electoral participation".

Ivania Álvarez, a researcher at Urnas Abiertas, added even more examples such as threats against medical students and against family members of people killed in the war who were told that their pensions would be withdrawn. She said others were told that their transportation or health permits wouldn’t be renewed and that cattle ranchers were told they wouldn’t be able to renew the certifications required to carry out their activities.

The coercion campaign included retirees and shopkeepers, added Ana Quirós, member of UNAB's Political Council.

What's next?

The consequences of this electoral operation in which nobody was being elected are, in general, predictable. What is not known is how quickly --and with how much virulence or intensity-- these consequences will play out. 

In addition to the international community’s foreseeable repudiation of the electoral process that Mairena alluded to, Barberena points out that "the dictatorship knows it has been defeated once again, but its reaction will be to repress and oppress Nicaraguan citizens.” He promises that “we will continue to advocate internationally for the release of political prisoners and the reestablishment of the rights of Nicaraguans.”

Quirós believes that "we will probably see an increase in migration, provoked by disenchantment and the recognition that there is no legitimacy in Nicaragua, as well as by the deepening of the social, political and economic crisis in the country, with the risk that some of our export markets will be closed".

"The repudiation of the regime will have a negative impact on the economic situation, and this will produce more emigration," consolidating the Nicaraguan government’s position as "the largest exporter of cheap labor to other countries," Quirós added. 

In a previous interview, Haydée Castillo, human rights defender and electoral observer, talked about how local governments are conceived as the closest to the needs of the population, in areas such as environment, water, sports, development, taxation, and other issues. 

Local governments that are the result of fraudulent processes such as this election cannot fulfill their role of satisfying these needs, due not only to the question of legitimacy, but also because of the total subordination of the interests of the local communities to the interests of the Executive Branch, including the use of mayors’ offices as “petty cash for the dictatorship", and as a base of operations for repression against its citizens.

Essentially, as long as the foreign debt continues to grow and the price of basic foodstuffs such as beans, cheese and oil remain so expensive, while wages are so low that two minimum wages are not enough to buy the basic food basket, Castillo predicts there will be increased exodus, migration and forced exile because "Nicaraguans can no longer build a life project in these circumstances".

This article was originally published in Spanish in Confidencial and translated by our staff.