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Ortega refuses to admit defeat
Jimmy Carter mediating Nicaragua elections dispute
October 22, 1996
Web posted at: 7:00 p.m. EDT (2300 GMT)In this story:
- Elections by all accounts fair
- Parties allege election fraud
- Nicaraguan public takes sides
- Related stories and sites
MANAGUA, Nicaragua (CNN) -- With more than half the votes in Nicaragua's presidential election counted, Liberal Alliance candidate Arnoldo Aleman was the clear winner Tuesday. But Sandinista candidate Daniel Ortega refused to admit defeat, claiming the count was fraudulent.
The ballot tally so far shows Aleman winning 48.7 percent to Ortega's 38.9 percent -- well ahead of the 45 percent majority Aleman needs to avoid a runoff.
The Liberal Alliance party also looks set to win the most seats in the National Assembly, although with 23 other parties also involved in the election, the Liberal holding will perhaps not be an overall majority. And Liberal Alliance candidates won majorities in several town councils.
Elections by all accounts fair
Former United States President Jimmy Carter, the highest- profile member of the group of observers monitoring the country's elections, met late Monday with current Nicaraguan president Violeta Chamorro, Ortega, Aleman and several electoral authorities to untangle the dispute.
Most observers agree that the elections, though complex, were essentially clean. "The general consensus among all of the observers ... is that the election didn't have any degree of fraud that would subvert the decision of the Nicaraguan people," Carter told a news conference on Tuesday.
But Ortega didn't back down. "We're concerned over fraudulent aspects that are emerging in this election, that there is not a climate of confidence that existed in the 1990 election which allowed the Sandinistas to immediately accept defeat," Ortega said Monday.
Parties allege election fraud
The Sandinistas and other small parties who lost the elections maintain that tallies from their representatives at polling stations conflict with the official count from the Supreme Election Council, which calculated results based on telegrams sent in by the heads of each polling station.
Carter acknowledged that the minority parties had "a legitimate concern" about the elections results. "Problems have resulted from the complexity of these elections," he said. More than 32,000 candidates from 24 different parties and alliances ran for 2,000 different posts in this election. Each voter was issued six different ballots to complete.
To help resolve the issue, the Supreme Election Council will provide copies of the telegrams to the political parties, so they can double-check the results. It would also reexamine its results, Carter said. The process will delay a final official election result for several days.
Nicaraguan public takes sides
After a campaign in which both leading parties lambasted each other, Nicaraguans seemed prepared to duke out the fraud question among themselves, rather than accept a calm resolution to Ortega's claims.
Telephone calls from Sandinista supporters jammed the switchboards of television talk shows, calling for the vote to be annulled.
Yet many in Nicaragua sided with the elections commission, and accused Ortega's Sandinista party, which ruled the country from 1979 to 1990, of being sore losers. Managua taxi driver Luis Flores summed it up for many: "The Sandinistas don't want to accept that the people will never vote them back into power again."
Correspondent Lucia Newman and Reuters contributed to this report.
Related stories:
- Conservative claims victory in Nicaraguan election - October 21, 1996
- Nicaraguans head to polling booths - October 20, 1996
- CNN Travel Guide - Nicaragua
Related sites:
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- Nicaragua - Facts
- Nicaragua - A country study
- Nicaraguan Foundation for Democracy and Development (NFDD)
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