General Elections of 2001
Nicaragua held presidential and legislative elections in November 2001. Enrique Bolanos of the Liberal Constitutional Party was elected to the Nicaraguan presidency on November 4, 2001, defeating Sandinista candidate Daniel Ortega by 14 percentage points. President Bolanos was inaugurated on January 10, 2002. His administration sought to deliver on campaign promises to reinvigorate the economy, create jobs, fight corruption, and support efforts against terrorism. However, political attacks from both the left and the right severely blunted his administration’s efforts to shrink traditional sources and bases of political patronage and corruption.
Dissatisfaction with both major parties (PLC and FSLN) led members of the Conservative Party and other smaller parties to try to assemble a centrist coalition that could offer a viable third option for the 2001 election. Organizers approached former president Violeta Barrios de Chamorro, who opinion polls showed could beat both the PLC and FSLN. On 8 February 2001, Mrs. Chamorro issued a statement to the press saying she would head a coalition if the Conservative Party (the only other party with an electoral registration allowing it to field candidates against the PLC and FSLN) would select candidates from all of the allied groups. The Conservatives balked, and Mrs. Chamorro declined to run, saying that “if a party continues to act alone, or limits itself to its own little circle in a small and limited alliance, leaving other forces outside the circle, it cannot become the democratizing hope that we so badly need in this crucial moment”.
The Conservatives instead nominated National Assembly deputy Noel Vidaurre as their presidential candidate, and former Sandinista ambassador to Washington Carlos Tünnerman as their vice presidential candidate. But orthodox Conservatives protested the nomination of Tünnerman and blocked the inclusion of other leftists as candidates for seats in the National Assembly. Unable to reach consensus on a slate of candidates that could unify the opposition to the PLC and FSLN, Vidaurre and Tünnerman resigned on 17 July 2001.
That left only two presidential slates with any real chance of winning the election. One was the Liberal Constitutionalist slate headed by Enrique Bolaños, a business leader jailed by the Sandinistas who served as Alemán’s vice president. The other was the FSLN slate headed by Daniel Ortega, who was making his fourth presidential bid. In an effort to expand its appeal, the FSLN nominated Agustín Jarquín, the former Comptroller who had exposed corruption in the Alemán administration, for vice president. Jarquín had been jailed by the Sandinistas during the 1980s. He later supported the National Opposition Union (UNO, Unión Nacional Opositora), the coalition that defeated the Sandinistas in the 1990 elections. Jarquín is a member of the Social Christian Unity Party (USC, Unidad Social Cristiana).
The FSLN also organized a wider alliance – the National Convergence (CN, Convergencia Nacional) – encompassing some of the groups that had tried to form a third option. Prominent among the members of CN was Miriam Argüello, a member of the Conservative Party (PC, Partido Conservador). Argüello was imprisoned by the Sandinistas in 1985, then served as president of the National Assembly during the administration of Violeta Barrios de Chamorro. Also joining the CN was Stedman Fagoth, a Miskito from the Caribbean coast who had formerly been a Contra commander in the civil war against the Sandinistas during the 1980s.
The Liberal campaign capitalized on the mood following the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center and Pentagon to remind voters of the Sandinistas’ difficult relations with the US. Bolaños said that Ortega was surrounded by “terrorists” in his campaign, including former interior minister Tomás Borge (FSLN candidate for a seat in the National Assembly) and retired general Alvaro Baltodano (FSLN campaign manager). Ortega responded by saying that the Sandinistas never attacked the US on its home turf, even when the CIA was coordinating attacks on Nicaragua. The Sandinistas also drew attention to corruption under Alemán, and hoped the large numbers of younger voters would tip the balance in their favor.
The presidential elections of 2001 were once again held with competition limited to the three political forces: the PLC in alliance with the majority of smaller political parties, the FSLN and the PC. A significant event marring these elections was the disqualification of José Antonio Alvarado who was supposed to run as the candidate for the PLC alliance. Rene Herrera, Vice Minister of Internal Affairs, annulled a legal resolution that had restored Nicaraguan citizenship to Alvarado, a move that opened the way for the candidacy of Enrique Bolaños Geyer, who won the elections with 52.8 percent of the vote.
The FSLN received 42.4 percent of the vote, while the PC received 4.8 percent. In 2001 a new conflict between the political powers in the country emerged when the Comptroller of the Republic requested the impeachment and dismissal of the President of the Republic Enrique Bolaños Geyer. The Comptroller accused the president of having concealed information from this organization in regards to the financing of his 2001 presidential campaign.
As a result of the threatening situation the government requested that the OAS send a mission to evaluate the course that these actions were having, and in order to avoid an institutional crisis. Once he had assumed the Presidency in 2002, Bolaños boldly took up the battle against corruption. The result was the conviction of the ex-president Arnoldo Alemán, the man who had launched Bolaños as the “anointed” candidate for the PLC. The conviction was only made possible because of the help the government received from the FSLN through a temporary alliance, the alliance held until 2003 when the Board of Directors of the National Assembly had to be elected.
The election of the Board of Directors of the Assembly was controlled by members of the PLC and others in the Assembly that were aligned against the Bolaños government (the White and Blue Bench). This scenario pushed the FSLN into searching for a new pacto with the PLC, this time the liberation of Arnoldo Alemán was also put on the table. The pacto also resulted in more constitutional reforms that further reduced the powers of the executive and furthered distributed the control, between these two parties, of the rest of the branches of government. This new situation presented a break in the balance of powers, and pushed the government to ask for the cooperation of the OAS in resolving the political crisis in order to keep it from escalating into a conflict of major proportions with grave consequences for the people of Nicaragua.
The OAS mission arrived on 18 October 2004, to report on the situation. The mission met with all of the political actors involved in the emerging crisis. Once the Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega had given his assurance that president would be allowed to finish his term, the fear of a dismissal disappeared.
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