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Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional (FSLN)
Sandinista National Liberation Front,

During the 1980s, Nicaragua’s ruling Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN, Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional) fought a civil war against US-supported counterrevolutionaries (contras) that began to wind down following the signing of a Central American peace agreement in 1987. The political conflict then moved from the battlefield to the ballot box. In 1990, the FSLN lost the presidential election to Violeta Barrios de Chamorro, who headed a broad coalition (UNO, Unión Nacional Opositora) that included former contra leaders.

The Sandinistas came to power in 1979 determined to transform Nicaraguan society. How well they succeeded in their goal was still being debated. During their years in power, the Sandinistas nationalized the country's largest fortunes, redistributed much of the rural land, revamped the national education and health care systems to better serve the poor majority, rewrote the laws pertaining to family life, and challenged the ideological authority of the Roman Catholic bishops. But although the Sandinistas were confronting a society that was subject to powerful forces of secular change, this society also had deeply ingrained characteristics. Before and after the Sandinista decade, Nicaraguan society was shaped by the strength of family ties and the relative weakness of other institutions; by rapid population growth and rising urbanization; by male dominance, high fertility rates, and large numbers of female-headed households; by the predominance of nominal Roman Catholicism existing alongside the dynamism of evangelical Protestantism; by steep urban-rural and class inequalities; and by sweeping cultural differences between the Hispanic-mestizo west and the multiethnic society of the Caribbean lowlands.

Since the inception of democratic rule in Nicaragua in 1990, political power has been contested between two majority forces: the Liberals on the right, and the Sandinistas on the left. The civil war and economic mismanagement in the 1980s, and the Sandinista giveaway of government property to party leaders in 1990 (the "pinata"), turned a significant majority of the population against the Sandinista Front (FSLN), preventing the FSLN from winning national elections. Recognizing demographic realities, the Sandinistas since 1990 methodically promoted divisions on the right and worked to maximize their voting strength by building a large and disciplined party structure.

After the Sandinista Front lost the 1990 election, a strong debate developed between those who believed in staying faithful to the principles of the Sandinista Revolution and those who believed in a move towards European-style social democracy. Daniel Ortega lead those who insisted on fighting to defend strong government intervention in a mixed economy and an anti-imperialist foreign policy. The social democrat faction, led by former Vice President Sergio Ramirez, argued for a shift to a more free market economic policy and an accommodation with the reality of US power in the region. Through 1993 and 1994, Ramirez and his allies organized a parliamentary coup leading a majority of the 39 Sandinista deputies elected in 1990 to work with right-wing factions, railroading through the National Assembly restrictive changes to the 1987 Constitution.

The FSLN unquestionably maintained the firm adhesion of an important sector of the citizenry (basically sectors of poor and middle-income strata) benefited by the distribution of resources and the participation achieved in the eighties) that put it as the main force of opposition and/or alliance with the governing party. A solid political base despite the organizational centralism that limits criticism or alternative leaderships and presenting a candidate (Daniel Ortega) for the third time who is vulnerable because he is reminiscent of the military draft and the penuries of the war in the eighties. While he enjoys broad support within the party, he is largely rejected outside of the FSLN. A negative appraisal of the revolutionary process and the cruel war of the eighties remains in the self-vision of a majority of citizens that is expressed in an anti-Sandinista vote despite the socioeconomic crisis experienced in the nineties and the corruption and inefficiency of the latest governments.

After the FSLN lost the 1990 elections, divisions within the party became more pronounced until 1995 when a reformist faction led by Sergio Ramirez and others broke away to form the Movimiento Renovación Sandinista (MRS), Sandinista Renewal Movement, sometimes referred to as the Movimiento Renovador Sandinista. Daniel Ortega, president of the country until 1990 and leader of the so-called orthodox group within the FSLN, retained leadership of the party, with the second position held by Tomás Borge, the hard-line former interior minister. Ramírez, vice-president under Ortega in the former Sandinista government, was elected president of the MRS, and former FSLN guerrilla commander Dora María Téllez as his deputy. The MRS itself had been vulnerable to divisions, as in 2001 when Téllez, then MRS president, signed an electoral alliance with Ortega, a move rejected by Ramírez.

Some social and professional groups traditionally allied with the Sandinistas also took a reformist line, for example, the Unión de Periodistas de Nicaragua (UPN), Union of Journalists of Nicaragua. The UPN was originally under the full control of the FSLN. But after the FSLN lost power, the UPN distanced itself and backed efforts to reform the party such as those by Sergio Ramirez and the others who went on to form the MRS. The UPN continues to be viewed as the leftist journalist group in Nicaragua, in contrast to the conservative Asociación de Periodistas de Nicaragua (APN), Association of Journalists of Nicaragua. Still, the extent of the UPN break from the orthodox, Ortega-dominated FSLN has been evident in joint UPN-APN communiqués and the UPN cooperating with the APN on the issue of securing journalist pensions. The UPN has branches in most departments of the country, including Jinotega.

With regard to the FSLN response to internal critics, expulsion has been common, practically systematic. In 1999, a number of prominent party members were expelled for criticizing a pact negotiated by Ortega between the FSLN and the ruling, right-wing Partido Liberal Constitucionalista (PLC), Liberal Constitutionalist Party, of then-president Arnoldo Alemán that gave the two parties a virtual monopoly on the political system and granted former presidents (Ortega and eventually Alemán) immunity from prosecution by making them congressmen for life. In September 2001, Marc Cooper, writing from the left in Mother Jones magazine, reported: "Over the past few years Ortega has steamrollered internal opposition, expelled his own allies by the dozens"Ortega has crushed repeated attempts to democratize the FSLN, expelling internal critics and launching smear campaigns against outsiders".

Moreover, a number of FSLN dissidents have publicly claimed that they have received death threats, including former Managua councilman and radio figure Carlos Guadamuz, Rev. Miguel Angel Casco, who once occupied an FSLN leadership position, and Zoilamérica Narváez Murillo, Daniel Ortega's stepdaughter and FSLN activist whom he allegedly abused. Narváez Murillo claimed to have been subjected to death threats and other forms of intimidation after she went public in March 1998 with her allegations of more than a decade of sexual abuse. It was also rumored that members of the FSLN who called for a public forum on this or other controversial issues would have their party membership suspended or be disciplined in other ways.

In 2001, Tina Rosenberg, member of the New York Times editorial board and longtime Latin American analyst, compared Ortega's "authoritarian nature" to the Somoza regime the Sandinistas overthrew in 1979. In March 2002, at the time of the FSLN party congress, Oscar Martínez, the FSLN political secretary in the southwestern city of Masaya, told the press that in the congress "everything is bolted down," with no room for those who diverged from Ortega's orthodox line. Another Sandinista dissident, Mónica Baltodano, said that "there was no opening in the congress. It probably closed even more." Tomás Borge referred to Baltodano, Irvin Davila and others calling for a new party leadership as "an insignificant minority".

The possibility existed of the FSLN actually responding with extreme violence against party dissidents, particularly in violence plagued departments such as Jinotega, where political animosity, personal vendetta and rampant criminal violence frequently overlap, making it difficult for Nicaraguan media and non-governmental groups to discern politically motivated violence. Further complicating the issue is the continued existence in Jinotega and neighboring areas of remnants of former Sandinista army units and former anti-Sandinista Contras. Jinotega and other departments in the north and northeast have been identified by the Organization of American States (OAS) as the most adversely affected by the decade long civil war in the 1980s, where governmental institutions and law enforcement remain weak and undermined by corruption or non-existent. In 1998, the non-governmental Centro Nicaragüense de Derechos Humanos (CENIDH), Nicaraguan Center for Human Rights, reported hundreds of incidents of violence and more than three murders per month in Jinotega and neighboring Matagalpa department, although it did not say to what extent any of the incidents involved politics.

Remarking on the continued existence of armed groups in rural areas and the propensity for violence in the country generally, former Sandinista guerrilla commander and cabinet minister Henry Ruíz stated in 2001: "In Nicaragua, we have never believed in either laws or institutions. In our history, conflicts have always been resolved through guns, through violence"

FSLN founder and Ambassador to Peru Tomas Borge told local press in early September 2009 that "anything can happen in Nicaragua except for one thing - that the FSLN will lose power again... We will do everything to remain in power, whatever the cost."

By 2016, faced with a right-wing psychological warfare campaign, the FSLN refused to fall into the trap of polarization which was so disastrous in the 1980s. It achieved that by a massive commitment to solving people's fundamental problems in the areas of health care, education, transport, access to basic services, access to credit, support for rural families, security of land title and better infrastructure. Government policy also prioritized food assistance to the most vulnerable, support for very young children, replacement of defective domestic roofing, mass health campaigns against mosquito borne diseases, nationwide support for sports activities and also cultural activities both traditional and contemporary.