The votes counted alone

Chile-Me Santiago had Luis Yanez, who came to observe the elections this Sunday in Nicaragua at the head of the Mission of the European Union, that once he had to meet a work similar in one of the new republics that emerged to the collapse of the Soviet Union.

The old Supreme party leader had changed costume and presented as a candidate for President because he had no choice but to play democratic before the new times.

The day of the vote fell to Luis go to a rural area quite distant from the capital to see how was the process, and at the time was approaching scrutiny came to a school where the teacher, who was the Chairman of the Board, refused to let him in.

He showed his credentials, he insisted, the other refused, and suddenly the man what he did was take the urn of vote and to run away with her down a hallway to lock in your Office.

Luis came after u000ahim, and found that had emptied all the ballots in the soil, and with the empty urn hands looked it with smile triumphant.

The fate of democracy in that country, with the open vote on the floor, was thus illustrated better than I could say it any technical report. Of course that the old leader won elections, and then succeeded it by his son, probably because table chairpersons continue fleeing, carrying looted the ballot box with votes.

This story might seem written by Gogol, or by Pirandello. Someone who runs with the URN full of votes, in all good literature is a laughable character, a character comedy but with a tragic substrate, and that character is able to embody the real story, give face, and give a sense. And it is a picture of what happened in Nicaragua that Sunday. The official party led the polls with voters and locked herself alone, desparramó ballots by the u000asoil, and sat down to tell them without witnesses. To any observer that suddenly opened the door, and found it in its fraudulent work, which would make would be laugh.

At thousands of polling the votes were counted alone, because there was a deliberate plan to prevent prosecutors from opposition parties were present from the beginning. Were denied them the credentials through all kinds of traps, and in rural communities where already could not prevent that prosecutors be integrated to the tables, simply opened centres vote.

Thousands of citizens fought until the last moment because they handed over their identity cards, and protesting through sites to electoral offices, with you dam road, in the end, one of many cases, they raided these offices, they released the retained ballot papers, and were to deliver them to the priest so that it will distribute them to their u000arightful owners. Now, instead of the implementation of a piece of Pirandello, have a film of Berlanga.

Where the ballot papers were denied was because the official party was afraid of losing, meanwhile, to his own supporters, the ballot papers they were delivered at home, courtesy of the House. And thousands of dead, as the dead souls of Gogol, contained in the lists of the padrón elector should consult in voting centres to learn what receiving Board go.

In Matagalpa, leo, a humble voter, Jacinto Villalta López saw in the list the name of his daughter Claudia Carolina Villalta Cano, died of cancer in 1999 at the age of twenty-one. Had already voted from the more there, or someone had done for her

It was not but weep.

Roberto Courtney, the director of ethics and transparency, a prestigious Institute which has been observed and evaluated the previous electoral processes in Nicaragua, and that this time is you u000aHe denied involvement, has declared that thirteen international rules that are used for measuring the transparency of elections, these Sunday are deferred twelve.

I.e. lose all credibility. It said Roberto Bendaña, President of another of agencies devoted to electoral observation, making democracy, who also denied involvement.

Has described them stuffed. There were twelve thousand boards recipients of votes in this election, and in close to four thousand of them official party stayed only to counting the votes to your tastes. Where there was neither a single Prosecutor's opposition, voters faced the polling station managers who are the official party, or related to him; the prosecutors from the official party, electoral police officers appointed by the Ministry of the Interior, i.e. the official party. And in all other structures, from the bottom upwards, was the official match with their u000athousand hands and its thousand faces, up to the Supreme Electoral Council, all composed of judges of the official party, or the official party faithful.

All a theatrical machinery where actors and actresses main and secondary, tramoyistas, openers, apuntadores, writers, librettists, are without exception the official party. A great scene.

A great farce. In this way, Commander Daniel Ortega, whose candidacy was already anyway illegal because the re-election is prohibited by the Constitution, is winning, according to official results, by more than sixty percent of the votes, and for more than seventy percent in Managua.

Road to the unanimity achieved in the future. Because the party official, in the same election, you have been awarded a number large MEPs, sufficient to change the Constitution, establishing the re-election without term and extent, and give us a political regime of u000adirect democracy, governed by the committees of citizen power, old and obsolete dream which is now going to take body.

Do win Commander Daniel Ortega these elections? how much votes out of truth? how many votes took really the candidate who was opposed, Fabio Gadea Mantilla? It seems that already never we will know what.

At the end of the function, the spotlight falls on the figure of the lonely man who counts votes sitting on the floor after emptying the URN that has fled to the race.

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