Daniel Ortega extends his absolute control of the administration by taking over the 153 municipalities of Nicaragua

Members of voting boards wait for voters on Sunday in Managua. Jorge Torres (EFE)

Daniel Ortega and his wife, Vice President Rosario Murillo, were awarded this Sunday all the mayorships of Nicaragua -up to 153- through a vote marked by citizen disinterest and abstention.

According to the first data from the Supreme Electoral Council, the Sandinista Front won the 17 departmental capitals, extending the single-party and authoritarian regime to the entire local administration of the country.

The process was marked by a lack of competition and citizen apathy, after the regime gave the last blow to the municipalities last July, when it decapitated the last five mayors governed by the opposition.

Sandinismo went to the polls with comparsa political parties to simulate a competition.

However, according to provisional data, they have not obtained any mayorship.

According to the first preliminary report of the Electoral Power, the Sandinistas won the municipalities of Murra, Santa María de Pantasma, El Almendro, El Cuá, San Pedro de Lóvago, Camoapa, among others that had historically been anti-Sandinista strongholds.

Despite the fact that official propaganda insisted on a high turnout, the independent organization Urnas Abiertas estimates abstention at 82.7% of the electorate.

It is a percentage of participation similar to the general elections of 2021, in which Ortega and Murillo managed to stay in power after capturing all the presidential candidates.

The opponents in exile consider these elections as a fraud.

To simulate electoral tension and competition, the comparsa parties usurped the identities of more than 1,000 citizens to put them on the electoral list, according to these opponents.

The ballot boxes were empty and the effort of Sandinismo to attract voters was evident, these same sources add.

“The international community, with the diaspora in exile, in the United States, in Europe and Costa Rica, is protesting against electoral fraud, but also against arrests.

We are experiencing a torturous process for the people who are in exile and want to return, but also for those who are inside the country," said the student Armando Noguera at a demonstration in San José, Costa Rica, the city where he is concentrated. much of the opposition that has fled Nicaragua.

“Unprecedented coercion”

Open Ballot Boxes reported "unprecedented coercion" towards public workers, opponents and the general public.

According to this organization, the Sandinista regime monitored people in each house to prevent any expression of resistance and in some cases to force them to go to the polls.

The Sandinismo installed checkpoints in which political operators of the ruling party watched and controlled who came to vote, they add in the organization.

Numerous videos circulated on social networks of militants carrying the electoral roll in their hands to get the residents out of their homes.

In the city of León, in the west of the country, Sandinista Fidel Bervis ordered his party colleague to “write down their phone numbers (citizens) and what time they are going to vote.

For control purposes only.

Then Bervis tells them that once they have voted, send them a photo with their finger stained (with indelible ink as a sign that they have already voted).

In state institutions, they ordered public officials to send a photo with a stained finger as proof that they had attended the vote.

Those who did not submit their image were pressured by their superiors throughout the day to go to the polls.

A photograph of police officers showing their stained fingers while loading rifles inside a voting center was also released.

Open Ballot Boxes described the scene as "a clear violation of the electoral law, which prohibits entering the polling place armed."

Ortega and Murillo voted around two in the afternoon in Managua.

The Sandinista leader gave a brief speech in which he stressed that voting was synonymous with peace.

“There are still a few hours to go, where we are sure that Nicaraguans, women and men, men and women, who know that this vote is a vote for peace, will continue to arrive at the voting centers.

Beyond the party to which the vote is cast, they are voting for Nicaragua.

And by voting for Nicaragua, you are voting for peace,” he remarked.

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