General Elections of 1990
The first democratic elections in Nicaragua took place on 25 February 1990 when Nicaraguans for the first time in their history freely cast a secret vote. The result was the election of the coalition UNO, a coalition of 13 opposition parties to the FSLN, as their government. More than four thousand observers - from the UN, OAS and Carter Center, among many others - certified that the electoral process had been fundamentally just and therefore free and fair.
This was the first step towards the institutionalization of democracy in Nicaragua. The elected government of Violeta Barrios de Chamorro attempted to implement the changes needed to establish the basis for the new democratic system. The first task was the establishment of a National Constituent Assembly. The coalition that brought Chamorro to power, however, fell apart in 1993 and for more than a year the coalition legislators paralyzed and boycotted the National Assembly.
Since the Chamorro government did not count with the sufficient votes to undertake constitutional changes, the government established an alliance with the representatives of UNO that were at the center of the coalition and the FSLN in order to begin the process of reforming the Constitution in 1995. The reforms covered a wide range of topics which included the following: prohibition of immediate re-election; prohibition of the naming of relatives of the president to government posts; suspension of obligatory military service; a change in the name of the military; appointment of a new CSE; empowering the Assembly to annul the presidential veto with a simple majority; and the transfer of taxation power to the Assembly.
This foreshadowed the beginning of the transfer of functions to the Legislative Branch from the Executive Branch (since what already existed was a well-drawn presidential system), although, the country did not shift from a strong presidential system to a balanced parliamentary system.
During President Chamorro's nearly seven years in office, her government achieved major progress toward consolidating democratic institutions, advancing national reconciliation, stabilizing the economy, privatizing state-owned enterprises, and reducing human rights violations. In February 1995, Sandinista Popular Army (EPS) Commander General Humberto Ortega was replaced, in accordance with a new Military Code enacted in 1994, by General Joaquin Cuadra, who has espoused a policy of greater professionalism in the renamed Army of Nicaragua. A new police organization law, passed by the National Assembly and signed into law in August 1996, further codified both civilian control of the police and the professionalization of that law enforcement agency.
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