Election preparations show counterrevolutionaries of the FDN and the ARDE.
mass support for FSLN
Wrecking campaign
With the adoption of the electoral law by the Council of State in March,
The counterrevolutionary forces can another important step was taken in setting the stage for the elections create a situation of insecurity in peasant areas and provide arguments for the cam-
At that time, a president, vice-president and a 90-member National counterrevolutionaries the paign
The latter will have constituent-assembly waging against compulsory military sermore, they can inflict powers. In all cases, those elected will serve for six years.
vice.
serious economic damage. At the end of
1983, official sources estimated that the losses caused by sabotage amounted to
" The outlook
"many millions of dollars.
will be much worse if the enemy is able to block the ports, especially Corinto, through which a large proportion of the
Facing such a situation, the Sandinista leaders have stepped up their appeals to their people and to world public opinion.
On March 13, in the name of the Government Council, Daniel Ortega called on
"all the world's governments, the United
Nations, the Non-Aligned Movement, the
Contadora Group and the people of the
United States" to demand that Washington take its troops out of the region, immediately cease its aggressions against
Nicaragua, seek a "reasonable" political to the Salvadoran crisis and solution undertake to find solutions to the existing problems with Nicaragua.
At the beginning of April, the Nicaraguan government received a visit from
W. Shlaudeman, US roving ambas-
Harry
Langsador for Central America, and horne A. Motley, US envoy and undersecretary of state for Latin America. It put these demands to them. The results were
On April 7, Daniel next to nothing.
Ortega raised the alarm about the "biggest military offensive" since the triumph of the revolution.
time, the Sandinista
At the same leaders are continuing to put pressure on a series of Latin American countries, in and the Contadora particular Mexico
But they are not concealing their
Group.
disappointment with the latter.
4 that are to be held November 4. Assembly will be elected. Livio MAITAN
The voting age has been set at 16, and soldiers will have the same right to vote as other citizens. The objections raised by some conservative parties to the vote for 16-year olds and soldiers were reject-
Every party can take part in the elections that has legal status according to the law on political parties. Concretely, means parties represented in the Council of State. Every party or coalition will have the right to a subsidy of 6 million cordobas. (2)
The article of the law that set a requirement of 5,000 signatures candidates was finally taken out. The proposal to strike this provision came from the PSC, PSN, PCN, PLI, CAUS and the CGT(I). (3) mass organizations were against removing it. But this was agreed to after an intervention by Commander Carlos Nunez.
There are nine parties in the Council of State. By April 7, five of them - that is, besides the FLN, the PSN, the PCN, the PLI and the PPSC (Partido Popular Social Cristiano) - had already announced that they would participate in the elections. Since the MAP (Movimiento de Accion Popular) is not in the Council of State, it will not be able to run. (4)
Over the four years in which the Sandinista regime has been in power, one of the main accusations that the is that it has not gotten the endorsement of the people in elections. But from the moment that it was decided to call these elections - at a date even earlier than that projected at the start the representatives of the old ruling classes realized that the elections would boomerang against them.
The PLI was against the right to vote for but proposed that a certain number of soldiers, seats be reserved for them.
current semiofficial rate is 28 cor 2. The dobas per 1 dollar. 3. Partido Social Cristiano, Partido SocialMS COL diente, Nicaraguense, Central Autonoma Partido Liberal para la Indepen- Unidad Sindical and Confederacion General de los Trabajadores (Independiente). the Liga Marxista Revolucionaria, a small sec- 4. According La Prensa of February 8, tarian group it has never been part of the Fourth that calls itself Trotskyist, al though International, applied for recognition. Reportedly, it got no answer.
International Viewpoint 7 May 1984
In fact, it could be predicted that the FSLN would win a very comfortable majority, showing that it had the support of the masses, even on the electoral level. Very rapidly, the bourgeois parties and organizations began to challenge the democratic character of the elections, to raise the question about whether they would participate, to pose conditions.
In December already, the Coordinadora Sacasa, a coalition of three bourgeois parties - the Partido Social Cristiano, Partido Social Democrata (PSD) and the Partido Liberal Constitucionalista, the industrialists organization, COSEP and two yellow union confederations, the CTN and the CUS, gave the signal.
In a document, this coalition said that the elections would only be democratic if, among other things, there was a general amnesty (including for Somocista criminals), the law against taking capital out of the country was repealed, compulsory military service was eliminated and the makeup of the army was radically changed. With respect to the armed 'Everyone to the defence of people's power' banner flies over market (DR) forces, the coalition proposed going back to the Council of State's original scheme (that is, an army including both the Sandinista forces and the vestiges of the Somocista National Guard). In other words, the Coordinadora demanded that the FSLN give up, even before the elections, the hegemony that it won through its struggle against Somoza and wipe out important gains of the revolution.
It should be noted that in a statement before his recent pilgrimage to Western Europe, the political leader of ARDE, Robelo, made a similar proposal. He said that everyone without exception had to be able to participate in the elections, that "institutionalized repression" had to be ended, and that a clear separation had to be made between the army and the political authority, among other things. (Cf. Le Monde, April 20, 1984). The parties
But let's take a closer look at the positions adopted so far by the various parties. First of all, as regards the organizations that belong to the FPR, (5) the PPSC will not make a decision until April 29. The PLI has decided to go it alone. The latter's option was not taken without conflict. At the meeting where the decision was made, there were two opposing tendencies. The majority, led by Virgilio Godoy, the minister of labor who had already decided to resign, came out for leaving the FPR and running an independent slate. The minority, led by Rodolfo Robelo, was for staying in the FPR.
The PSN seemed at first to have opted for a FPR united slate. Then it tried without success to achieve a front of the "Marxist left," together with the PCN and the Frente Electoral Marxista, an organization that came out of Accion Popular Marxista-Leninista. Finally, it decided to run candidates of its own, while at the same time reaffirming "its International Viewpoint 7 May 1984 policy of unity and for a democratic revolutionary alliance around the FDR."
The FSLN itself so far has done nothing more than disseminate a document adopted at its March 23-25 National Assembly, in which the elections are presented as an occasion for ratifying the gains of the revolution. PCN condemns elections
Finally, another party that claims to the workers movement, PCN, has explained in a public rally, through the person of its main leader, Eli Altamirano, that the November 4 elections "are a gain for the national and international bourgeoisie, a victory for the world bourgeoisie over the Sandinista people's revolution" and not "a means for defending the people's power."
This not withstanding, the PCN will form an electoral front of its own with the perspective of forming "a democratic patriotic government" carry through a democratic agrarian reform involving the nationalization of the land and will renounce the foreign debt accumulated by the Somocista regime.
On the other side, the chairperson of the COSEtwine of the Sacasa, calling for boycotting the vote. He argued that the elections have been rigged from the start.
This position has run into resistance in the parties in the Coordinadora them-
One of these parties, the PSD confirmed already at the end of February that it would not participate in the elections and withdrew from the debate on the electoral law. The PLC is split into two tendencies, one of which seems to be in favor of participating (preferably in alliance with other parties). taken any decision yet. The PSC -which appears to be the most important party in the Coordinadora - has not decided anything either. Some elements seem to be opting for taking a "realistic" position, that is, for participating.
As for the other bourgeois party, which is not in the Coordinadora, the PCD (Partido Conservador Democrata), it has experienced a spectacular split, with violent polemics, forcible occupations of headquarters and so on. At the root of this split is the problem of whether or not to participate in the elections and more generally in the legal framework. Some elements seem to be advocating shifting to underground activity. The more moderate tendency is led by Pedro Espinoza, the other by Miriam Arguello. The latter is being supported by La Prensa, which refuses to publish communiques from the Espinoza tendency. The party is supposed to make a decision in May. Bourgeois parties in crisis
So, the picture is quite clear. calling of elections has produced a crisis in the bourgeois parties, which teel trapped. They obviously do not share the opinion of Eli Altarmirano and his party that the elections will mean a victory for the national and international bourgeoi-
They think, and quite rightly, that they have no chance of winning and that they will come out of the elections further
That is a quite well-founded
We do not think that the problem of giving an institutional form to the revoluwill be resolved by elections conceived on the basis of the bourgeois level, it will not be the bourgeoisie that
Frente Patriotico Revolutionario, as well as the PSN, the PPSC and,
an organization was entitled to legal status or not.
Through 1978 and 1979, we waged a struggle to meet the qualifications for legal status set by the reform. We considered at the time, from a tactical point of