Sandinistas rally against regime's foes

Streets becoming a free-for-all as Ortega stays silent

A masked supporter of the Sandinista party held a homemade mortar during a protest yesterday in Managua. Party supporters, some of them federal employees, took to the streets to counter opposition charges of vote-rigging in local elections. (Esteban Felix/Associated Press)

MANAGUA - Waving sticks and hurling stones, thousands of protesters backing the leftist Sandinista party angrily took to the streets of Managua Tuesday to support the results of local elections earlier in the month that the opposition says President Daniel Ortega rigged to expand his power.

The opposition leader, Eduardo Montealegre, had called for a march through the capital in protest of the Nov. 9 poll, which he says the Sandinistas stole to deny him the mayoralty of Managua. But the progovernment forces, some of them federal employees released early from their jobs to join the fray, surrounded Montealegre's backers, who then disbanded.

"This fight isn't about the Managua mayoralty," a fuming Montealegre said in an interview yesterday morning, insisting that he was the legitimate winner. "It's more fundamental. It's about dictatorship versus democracy."

The streets have turned into a free-for-all over the past week and a half, with Sandinistas firing off homemade mortar rounds, stoning passing vehicles and angrily confronting journalists, and opposition backers sometimes responding. Ortega has remained silent. A Sandinista revolutionary who led Nicaragua in the 1980s, he was ousted in 1990 but reelected in 2006, in a hotly contested race in which his closest rival was Montealegre.

The violence affected other parts of the country on Tuesday as well, with progovernment protesters invading and destroying three radio stations in Leon considered sympathetic to the opposition. The Sandinista mayoral candidate in that city, northwest of Managua, was declared the winner despite widespread reports of fraud, including ballots found in a municipal dump.

"The streets are ours," said Sandinista supporter Jose Bonilla, holding a homemade plywood shield during Tuesday afternoon's tumult in Managua. Fellow demonstrators, waving red-and-black Sandinista flags, shot mortar rounds over the heads of riot police officers who were blocking them from Montealegre's rally a block away.

When Ortega cast his ballot on Nov. 9, in an election that was viewed as the first test of his influence since he was reelected, he defended the integrity of the polling and accused the local media of attempting to discredit the results and "create an image of Nicaragua at war."

Montealegre, backed by leaders of the Catholic Church and Nicaragua's two largest business organizations, is demanding a full recount monitored by international observers. Ortega had not allowed observers during the municipal elections, which took place nationwide.

The Supreme Electoral Council, in its initial report, said the Sandinista mayoral candidate in Managua, Alexis Arguello, a three-time world boxing champion, had triumphed over Montealegre, who is a Harvard-educated ex-finance minister. But faced with a barrage of criticism from foreign governments, Roberto Rivas, president of the electoral council, ordered a recount, although he said it would not be monitored by outsiders.

"It's a special process we're going to do even though it's not required," Rivas told reporters earlier in the month. "We are doing it so that the Nicaraguan people - not the embassies - but the Nicaraguan people are completely satisfied that their vote was respected."

Rivas did not address allegations that polls closed early and that opposition electoral delegates were forced out of the final vote count in Managua. He did request that state prosecutors investigate the ballots found in the trash.

"It must be found out whether public officials are involved," he said, vowing to "get to the bottom of this case."

In his press conference, Rivas chided Montealegre for failing to file a formal fraud complaint with Nicaraguan prosecutors and for calling on his supporters to take to the streets in protest.

But Montealegre, in an interview, said it was the government that was responsible for the violence.