Efforts to cancel upcoming municipal elections in parts of Nicaragua’s hurricane-ravaged North Atlantic Autonomous Region sparked rioting Friday in the indigenous community of Bilwi, where opposition leaders claim the Sandinista government of President Daniel Ortega is trying to establish a dictatorship.
”The situation is chaotic and dangerous, and I think it is going to get even hotter,” anti-Sandinista indigenous leader Osorno Coleman, said in a phone interview from Bilwi. “The authorities have to act prudent right now.”
Two people were shot and there were conflicting reports on their status. Several others were injured by rocks as the regional Sandinista-allied group, YATAMA, clashed with a much larger opposition group that met with a delegation of Liberal Party lawmakers who traveled to the coast to investigate the situation.
The three visiting lawmakers were initially held hostage on their airplane, which was surrounded by some 80 YATAMA supporters. A larger group of several thousand anti-Sandinista indigenous people then came to the lawmakers’ rescue, clashing with the YATAMA group.
The rioting then spread as anti-Sandinista protesters took over the YATAMA-controlled mayor’s office, looting the building and breaking windows, while another group burned two government vehicles in the street. All flights to and from the regional airport were canceled for the second time in a week.
Coleman claims that the gunshots came from the YATAMA group headed by Brooklyn Rivera, a former anti-Sandinista militant who formed a controversial electoral alliance with Ortega in exchange for a seat in the National Assembly.
Rivera, meanwhile, claims the violence and rioting was incited by the three visiting lawmakers, including Enrique Quiñónez, against whom the Sandinistas filed a criminal accusation Friday afternoon.
”The population on the coast doesn’t have guns; it was the Liberals who went there and got the people drunk and drugged and gave them weapons, which they fired indiscriminately, killing one of their own,” Rivera said.
Quiñónez said he and the other lawmakers went to the coast only to listen to the concerns of lawmakers, and that he wouldn’t dignify Rivera’s ”stupid comments” with a response.
”The same ones who tried to persecute and exterminate the people on the Atlantic coast in the 1980s are, with their YATAMA allies, again trying to take away the right of the coastal population to have free elections,” Quiñónez said.
The National Police sent a high-level delegation from Managua out to the Caribbean coast by helicopter to investigate, but as of Friday night police and military reportedly had not intervened in the violence, witnesses said.
At the center of the controversy is the Sandinistas’ efforts to cancel the upcoming November elections in three municipalities under the argument that the conditions for voting don’t exist due to damage caused by last September’s Hurricane Felix, which destroyed much of the region, including school houses used for voting.
Ortega last week called for a suspension of the elections in the municipalities of Bilwi, Waspam and Prinzapolka — the same three municipalities controlled by the Sandinistas and their YATAMA ally.
The opposition claims the Sandinistas’ real motive is to hold onto power by avoiding elections they would lose. Critics claim efforts to suspend the vote is another example of the Sandinista government politicizing the hurricane disaster to meet its own needs.
Enrique Sáenz, of the dissident Sandinista Renovation Movement, said the ruling Sandinista Front is ”afraid that the [Caribbean] coastal population is going to hand them the bill after their disastrous terms in office.” He noted that the previous elections have been held in the Caribbean during times of flooding and even amid violent protests, and says the conditions are no worse now.
Bernicia Sanders, a leader of an indigenous women’s group from Bilwi, traveled to Managua last week to ask opposition political parties for support in defending the region’s right to hold elections.
”We know our rights,” she said. “And we need to elect our own leaders.”
Coleman, a former anti-Sandinista militant leader from the 1980s, says that canceling the elections would be nothing short of canceling democracy. ”If they suspend the elections, we will have a dictatorship,” he said.
There is also disagreement over which government institution would have the right to cancel the elections. Ortega has said the final word is up to the regional government council, controlled by YATAMA, while opposition lawmakers insist only the National Assembly has the right to cancel an election.
