~~ posted for dmorista ~~
Introduction by dmorista:
Here are a couple of articles, written by leftists who are friendly towards Nicaragua and the FSLN movement. They contrast strongly with the standard Corporate Controlled Media and covert operations disinformation screeds that most Americans think is actual news about Nicaragua and other places in the Global South. As for the response by a large part of the Nicaraguan population to the FSLN victory in the elections, the author of the top article (“Despite US led Dirty Campaign, Nicaraguans Came Out in Force in Support of the FSLN”, Nov 11, 2021, Rita Jill Clark-Gollub) observed that: “If I needed further confirmation that this reflected the will of the people, I got it on the way back to my hotel late Sunday night from seeing people dancing in the streets and setting off fireworks in Managua.” In the second article (“U.S. Threatens Regime Change in Nicaragua”, Nov 10, 2021, Margaret Kimberley) Margaret Kimberley observes that concerning the various negative reports in the Corporate Controlled Media in the U.S. that, rather then trying to propagandaize the people of Nicaragua itself: “The lies are intended for a different audience. The United States seeks to fool its own people and thereby gain support for whatever form of aggression that it may choose. …. Creating falsehoods of human rights abuses is a reliable ruse to keep Americans complacent about their government’s activities.” In addition Kimberly points out that in Nicaragua: “Voters from all these groups came out to well managed polling places, where all presidential candidates were listed on the ballot. The process was transparent and orderly, unlike the voting process in the United States, where eligible voters can be stricken from the ballot or be forced to wait for hours to cast their votes.”
Despite US led Dirty Campaign, Nicaraguans Came Out in Force in Support of the FSLN
By Rita Jill Clark-Gollub
Managua, Nicaragua
Nicaragua’s Supreme Electoral Council declared President Daniel Ortega and Vice President Rosario Murillo of the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) winners in an election that drew 65% of the eligible 4.4 million voters. Although Washington and its allies in the region denounced the election as a fraud preceded by repression of the opposition, there was significant participation of the electorate; moreover, despite claims that Ortega ran virtually unopposed, his ticket was contested by several long-standing opposition parties. Winning 75% of the vote, the FSLN demonstrated solid strength despite the U.S. government and mainstream media campaign to delegitimize this election.
Rita Jill Clark-Gollub shares her report from the ground in Nicaragua:
On Sunday, November 7, 2021, millions of Nicaraguan voters showed up at the polls to cast their votes in an orderly, calm election process. I was one of over 165 international accompaniers and at least 40 independent international journalists who collectively observed the vote at about 60 voting centers in 10 of Nicaragua’s 15 departments as well as its two autonomous regions.
Gender equity
Two pieces of background information provide helpful context. First, the Nicaraguan constitution creates an independent, non-partisan fourth branch of government to run elections, the Supreme Electoral Council (CSE). Second, the electoral law was updated this year to bring computer technology into the system, and to bring gender equity to the staff running the elections, thus completing implementation of the gender parity law passed in 2014. This means that all aspects of the CSE must be staffed with an equal number of men and women, and half of all poll workers, including poll watchers designated by the various political parties, must be women.
My observations were in the country’s second largest city, León. My first stop was a voting center at a school in the indigenous neighborhood of Subtiava, where 5,000 people are registered to vote.
Day of the election
Voters had shown up before the doors opened at 7:00 AM, and by 7:40, 500 people had already voted. A voter’s experience started by checking-in with staff manning four laptops. There had been a massive update and confirmation of the voter rolls earlier this year that informed people of their polling places. Voters were able to verify this information on paper and online, which minimized any issues at check-in. On election day, the entire voter roll for the individual voting centers was posted outside. This not only confirmed to people their voting place, but also allowed neighbors to identify names that should not be on the rolls, such as people who had died or moved away. Because of these updates and use of electronic tools, the check-in process was more efficient than people remembered in the past. Some of my fellow accompaniers even timed voters’ experiences and found the whole process usually took less than nine minutes.
After a voter checked in, he or she went to one of 13 classrooms to cast their vote. These are called Juntas Receptoras de Votos (Vote Intake Boards–JRV). Each one is designated to serve between 380-400 voters. Again, the voter roll for that JRV is posted outside the door. When voters came in, they gave their name to the three CSE workers who then checked them off on a paper printout of the roll. Then the CSE checked to find the voter on the pages with printouts of government-issued photo identification cards, and had the voter sign under their picture. After that they were given a copy of the ballot and directed to the three voting booths to mark the ballot. As you can see from this photo of the ballot, it is rather straightforward in showing the various parties running for President and Vice-President, National Assembly, and Central American Parliament. Voters then placed their folded ballots into the ballot boxes. After that, one of the three CSE members proceeded to mark the voters’ thumbs with indelible ink so that they could not vote twice.
Also present in the room were poll watchers (each party on the ballot is allowed to have a poll watcher present in each JRV for the entire election day) and elections police. The latter primarily provide alcohol to disinfect hands (a common practice in Nicaragua during the pandemic) and assist people with mobility issues to move within the classroom, as well as keeping disorderly people (such as drunks), from disrupting the process. I did not witness any such disruptions, nor did I hear of them (no liquor can be sold on election day). An interesting thing about the Nicaraguan voting process is that the vote tally takes place with paper ballots in the same room in which the votes are cast, and in the presence of the poll watchers. The number of ballots counted, plus the unused ballots, must match the number of ballots given to that room at the beginning of the day. A paper copy of the vote count is submitted to the central CSE, and it is also communicated electronically, but it is the paper trail that prevails in this case. Other international accompaniers who have witnessed elections in several countries said that this provides the most secure elections integrity possible.
“Nicaraguans want peace”
I saw this process repeated numerous times in the four voting centers I visited. I also asked people if they would like to answer a question, and virtually everyone I approached was eager to speak. I asked: What is the significance of what is happening in Nicaragua today? The answer was surprisingly unanimous among the dozens of people I spoke to: They said, “Nicaraguans want peace.” They also overwhelmingly said that they want to determine their future for themselves and want respect for their sovereignty without interference from the outside.
Plenty presence of the opposition
I found it particularly interesting to speak to the poll watchers from opposition parties that were present in the voting rooms. It bears noting that five traditional opposition parties, some of which have held the presidency in the 21st century, ran candidates for president, despite the reports we hear from the U.S. about Daniel Ortega eliminating his opponents. I asked them what they thought about participating in this election as part of the opposition. They generally indicated that it had been a smooth and respectful experience. One gentleman from the Independent Liberal Party (PLI) said, “We want to see what the people think. If a majority of people come out to vote—60 or 70 percent—then the election results will tell us what the people want. But if fewer than half of the electorate turns out to vote, that will mean that people felt they did not have a real choice in this election.”
I imagine the PLI will continue to participate in Nicaragua’s democratic process, despite the fact that the U.S. government is calling for sanctions on participating opposition parties, because of the high turnout. The landslide electoral victory indicates a clear mandate to stay on the path the country has been following since Daniel Ortega came back into office in 2007. If I needed further confirmation that this reflected the will of the people, I got it on the way back to my hotel late Sunday night from seeing people dancing in the streets and setting off fireworks in Managua.
Young voters
Another thing that was very palpable about the Nicaraguan elections experience was the massive involvement of young people. Not only were voters as young as 16 years old (the Nicaraguan voting age) turning out in large numbers, they were also working as poll watchers and accompanying entire families during what they called “a civic festival of democracy.”
As in most countries, the youth are big users of social media. But in Nicaragua about a week before the vote, over a thousand of these young people had their social media accounts shut down, causing them to collectively lose hundreds of thousands of followers. The Silicon Valley platforms said they were stopping a Nicaraguan government troll farm. I spoke with several people who were incensed by this because they personally knew real people who were accused of being bots, or were shut down themselves. A young Sandinista named Xochitl shared with me the screenshots of her FloryCantoX account that had 28,228 followers before Twitter shut it down, telling her that she violated their rules on using spam. This also happened to some of the international visitors to Nicaragua. And I have just heard from Dr. Richard Kohn, who was in Nicaragua observing the elections in the North Caribbean Coast Autonomous Region, that all of his photos and videos uploaded to Twitter on election day were removed.
The lies about the process
I am astounded at reports in the mainstream media and from the Biden administration declaring the vote a fraud, and that as few as 20% of the electorate turned out to vote. This flies in the face of my own experience. If I keep talking about it, will I, too, be accused of being a bot? And what does this information warfare mean for democracy in the United States and the American people’s right to know what is happening in other countries?
The Nicaraguan people know their lived reality. We need to continue helping to disseminate their truth.
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https://www.blackagendareport.com/us-threatens-regime-change-nicaragua
Nicaragua has been a target of U.S. aggressions since the 1850s. The Biden administration’s attack on the newly elected government is the latest chapter in a long and sordid history. Eyewitness accounts of the electoral process reveal the manipulations and lies concocted by the U.S. and its corporate media partners in this latest regime change effort.
The United States has continuously carried out acts of aggression against Nicaragua and its people for more than 150 years. Joseph Biden’s effort to undermine that country’s sovereignty is part of a long history of invasions, coups, and support for U.S. puppets.
The Biden administration declared the recent election fraudulent before it had even taken place. The corporate media repeated lies about an “authoritarian dictatorship” that came straight from the State Department’s script. The United States congress voted overwhelmingly to pass the RENACER Act, a regime change plot featuring the imposition of sanctions meant to create misery for Nicaraguans. Sanctions are war by other means, the modern-day version of sending the marines.
The U.S. has done just that, occupying the country from 1912 to 1933. But that was not the first time that U.S. forces were sent to undermine Nicaraguan governments. In 1856 an American named William Walker invaded the country with a mercenary army and declared himself president. Walker was supported by the American slavocracy and sought to create new slave holding nations in the region. During his year long reign, he revoked Nicaragua’s abolition law and he was recognized as president by the Franklin Pierce administration.
The next bout of American aggressions began with an occupation by the U.S. marines in 1912 which lasted until 1933. Augusto Cèsar Sandino fought a guerrilla war against the occupation before being executed under orders of Anastasio Somoza. The Somoza family ruled until 1979 and always with the backing of the United States.
The Sandinista movement (which took its name after Sandino) emerged triumphant in 1980 against Somoza’s regime and quickly came under attack from the Ronald Reagan administration. The opposition groups known as “contras” were given millions of dollars and were assisted in fund raising through the sale of cocaine in the United States. The crack cocaine epidemic began as part of a U.S. imperialist plan. The war waged in Nicaragua was also carried out against communities of color in this country too.
President Daniel Ortega was re-elected on November 7, 2021 and Washington once again declared war on his nation. The RENACER Act passed by a vote of 387 to 35 in the House of Representatives, a huge majority indicative of bipartisan support for war by other means.
The Biden administration acted quickly in denouncing the election before it took place, and repeated their claims of a “pantomime election ” on the day that Nicaraguans went to the polls. They followed up by orchestrating an Organization of American States (OAS) rejection of the Nicaraguan people’s electoral decision.
As a member of the Black Alliance for Peace (BAP) delegation in Nicaragua, this columnist witnessed the determination of Nicaraguans to choose their own government without interference. More than 200 representatives from 27 nations, were designated as acompañantes, companions, to the electoral process.
The BAP delegation travelled to the Caribbean coast city of Blue Fields where African descended Garifunas and Creoles reside with Mestizos and the Miskito, Rama, and Olwas indigenous communities. Voters from all these groups came out to well managed polling places, where all presidential candidates were listed on the ballot. The process was transparent and orderly, unlike the voting process in the United States, where eligible voters can be stricken from the ballot or be forced to wait for hours to cast their votes.
Despite what the white house and the corporate media claimed, opposition parties were able to campaign freely. Their signage and literature were quite visible, and no one can truthfully say that the public were unaware of the variety of electoral choices.
The Frente Sandinista para Liberacion Nacional (FSLN) emerged triumphant because they endeavor to meet popular needs. The Afro-descended citizens of the Caribbean coast were recognized as a group with distinct needs that were enshrined in the FSLN constitution. That region was excluded and quite literally isolated from the rest of the country without access to transportation and lacking basic infrastructure such as electricity and clean water. BAP delegates heard the consistent message that support for the FSLN is a result of concrete improvements in people’s lives. Despite the determination of the U.S. to undermine them, the FSLN now provide free health care and increased educational opportunities throughout the nation.
The 19th century Monroe Doctrine is alive and well in the 21st century. Whoever is in power in Washington considers other nations in this hemisphere to be its “backyard.” Nicaragua’s population of 6.5 million is smaller than that of New York City. Yet those few people are not allowed to exercise their rights to self-determination without raising Uncle Sam’s ire. Nicaraguans are not the first to feel imperialist vengeance. Tiny Grenada was undermined and invaded when it sought to determine democracy for itself. Venezuela is also under the sanctions hammer and Haiti is allowed to do nothing that Washington doesn’t approve.
The corporate media may be under the dictates of the state, but the people have no reason to follow suit. The presence of companion delegations in Nicaragua was an important step in revealing how the hybrid warfare playbook is put into practice.
Nicaraguans are well aware of their history. The lies are intended for a different audience. The United States seeks to fool its own people and thereby gain support for whatever form of aggression that it may choose. The plan is a consistent one which starts with media amplifying narratives that will gain support for interference. Creating falsehoods of human rights abuses is a reliable ruse to keep Americans complacent about their government’s activities.
The collusion between government and media explains why “trolls” are active on social media, attacking anyone who questions what Washington says. Facebook continued its work on behalf of the state by removing accounts expressing any support for Nicaragua’s sovereignty. The marriage of big tech companies and the Democratic party showed itself once again, proving that claims of freedom and democracy in U.S. politics are indeed an elaborate “pantomime.”
It may seem odd that a small nation can be the focus of so much determination to destroy its independence. But it isn’t hard to understand that Nicaragua threatens the U.S. should it be allowed to determine its own fate. The people who think they live in a democracy do not. They do not have access to free health care and are told they cannot expect to ever have it. Nicaragua is an example of what people in the U.S. could have if they were as free as they like to believe.
The drive to subjugate is as old as the republic, with the United States acting as a hegemon around the world, creating conflict and great suffering. The evil commitment to destroy Nicaraguan democracy is not unexpected but it must be vociferously opposed. Doing so is a litmus test which determines who is really on the left and who is not. There can be no compromise on the anti-imperialist stance. The human rights of people around the world must be respected and any United States government effort to violate them must be met with equivalent resolve.
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