Nicaragua’s electoral reforms seek to defend popular sovereignty as Washington intensifies its interference in Latin American elections.

Last week I was at a local neighborhood meeting in the Nicaraguan city of Masaya. More than a hundred people had come to hear a report from a doctor from the local health center and from a teacher at the technical college where the meeting was being held. We learnt about the attention being given to pregnant women (currently 11 pregnancies in the area), the mobile health clinic that would be arriving soon and new agricultural courses starting at the college, which opened only three years ago.

Then there was a political discussion about changes to the electoral system and the latest threats from Washington. Such neighborhood meetings represent Nicaragua’s “lived democracy.”

However, just eight years ago, for three months in mid-2018, it would have been impossible for my neighbors to meet or – in many cases – even leave our homes. The highway in front of what is now the technical college was full of roadblocks, erected and controlled by armed opposition thugs.

In this very street, a police officer was killed in an opposition attack. Masaya, a key focus of that year’s coup attempt, is peaceful once more. No one in the community – even those who don’t support the Sandinista government – wants a return to conflict.

That’s why, in dozens of meetings across the country – like the one pictured in Estelí – ordinary Nicaraguans have supported key reforms to protect our electoral process. National Assembly President Gustavo Porras, speaking in Estelí, said that “the elections are going to be the same as always,” but with the important qualification that they will not be open to anyone who has received foreign funding, has conspired to overthrow the government, or has called for sanctions or military intervention against their own country.

The nationwide consultations have included Nicaragua’s 15 political parties, whose rights to take part on an equal basis in presidential, regional and local elections are protected. Six of these parties had presidential candidates in the 2021 elections and others contested local elections.

There is nothing unusual about Nicaragua’s reforms. Practically all western countries have strict laws preventing foreign interference in elections. Not only is this the case in the US, but its constitution even specifically debars people from holding public office if they have “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” against the state or given “aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.”

Nicaragua is simply trying to protect its electoral process from foreign interference – overwhelmingly sponsored by Washington – in its politics. Such interference has been going on for decades and is intensifying.

The National Endowment for Democracy’s president, Damon Wilson, bragged to a House committee in February that his organization is funding media in Nicaragua with an eye to undermining its Sandinista government. NED funding comes from the State Department. Commenting on recent developments, Wilson claimed: “The Ortega-Murillo regime may seek to abolish elections, but it cannot abolish the Nicaraguan people’s desire for democracy. We will stand with them until that right is restored.”

There is no longer anything clandestine about such interference; Trump brags about it. At the Shield of the Americas summit in Miami on 7 March, he told Latin American leaders: “They are losing and they beg me for an endorsement. I give them an endorsement. They win by 30 points.”

Of particular significance to Nicaragua was his blatant interference in the elections in neighboring Honduras when, largely thanks to Trump, his favored candidate narrowly won after a highly questionable count. The New York Times concludes that “President Trump has become an electoral kingmaker in Latin America.”

Trump’s blatant interference continues unabated. Francisco Dominguez argues that in Brazil’s forthcoming polls, the Trump administration is overtly and intensely interfering in favor of the far-right candidate, Flavio Bolsonaro. The Times describes Trump’s influence as “looming” over Brazil’s elections. The LA Times calls it a fight by Trump, together with Marco Rubio, “to control the hemisphere.”

Free and fair elections are now at risk across the Americas – a threat US voters know well as Trump uses “the levers of presidential power” to sway the mid-terms.

If a huge country like Brazil has to fight to protect its electoral integrity, how much more at risk is a small country like Nicaragua, with a population just 3% of Brazil’s? Next door Honduras shows how a progressive government can be replaced by extreme neoliberalism if Trump intervenes.

As I write this, US Senate hearings are taking place and a meeting of Latin American foreign ministers has been called, both to discuss the “crisis” in Nicaragua. The problem, of course, is not that the country has “abolished” elections, as Rubio has claimed and corporate media have repeated. Rather, Nicaragua wants – as far as it can – to shield itself against Washington’s interference in its politics. For Rubio, this means that its government has “abandoned even the pretense of popular consent.” In reality, it is precisely such popular consent that has returned the Sandinista government to office in every election over the past two decades.

Published in Countercurrents, Popular Resistance, Pressenza, Black Agenda Report, Counterpunch, Scheerpost, Global Research, Tortilla con Sal, Resumen Latinoamericano, Internationalist 360, and elsewhere (y en Español, en Tortilla con Sal, Pressenza y Globalizacion).