Bush Must Denounce Sandinista Election Fraud

The Center for Security Policy today urged the Bush Administration immediately to denounce Sandinista efforts to rig the upcoming presidential elections in Nicaragua. In a report entitled, This is No ‘Free and Fair Election’ in Nicaragua, the Center summarizes the extensive evidence of systematic election fraud being perpetrated by the Ortega government against the UNO opposition.

"Before any more time elapses, President Bush must state publicly the myriad and palpable differences between the current Nicaraguan elections and those that could by any reasonable definition be called genuinely ‘free and fair,’" said Frank J. Gaffney, Jr., the Center’s director.

Evidence of electoral abuses by the Sandinista government outlined in the report include:

• conducting unverified voter registrations;

 

• footdragging on the dissemination of funds supplied to support democracy and the opposition;

 

• systematic and unequal exploitation of government resources; and

 

• unfair use of the government-controlled media, including willful misrepresentation of the opposition in the guise of "news."

Particularly worrisome is the Ortega government’s selective and manipulative use of "international observers" in a transparent attempt to obscure the rigged character of the election. The Center notes with concern that as few as one in ten of the polling stations involved in this vote will be monitored by such observers — an invitation to wanton electoral fraud.

Gaffney added, "Absent an immediate and clear presidential indictment of the Ortega government’s effort to rig this election, the Bush Administration will soon find its support for genuine democracy in Nicaragua severely compromised by Sandinista-approved international monitors seemingly prepared to legitimize a fraudulent vote. Worse yet, the Administration’s silence on communist election fraud in this hemisphere can only undermine the prospects for "free and fair elections" elsewhere in the Soviet bloc."

The Center’s analysis draws on numerous reports of unfair Sandinista campaign techniques documented by the U.S. State Department, the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs, and the National Republican Institute for International Affairs, and the Puebla Institute, among others.