This is the reaction of the Nicaraguan University Alliance to the elections held in Nicaragua on November 7, 2021. This is a student movement that was founded on April 24, 2018, 5 days after the start of the uprising that began on April 18, 2018, and whose principal leaders, Lesther Alemán and Max Jerez have now been jailed for 126 days. Lesther interrupted Ortega´s speech in the opening day of the first dialogue to demand an end to the repression. Given the importance of the student movement this is an important analysis of the election results.
In the face of fraud: fight, fight and fight
November 8, 2021 by the Editors of the Nicaraguan University Alliance
Today Sandinism consummated an electoral fraud greater than their electoral farse of 1984 and what Somocism did in 1974. Sandinism has outdone itself, and its past nemesis, Somocism. The Blue and White people are fighting against this disastrous dictatorship.
For the AUN [Nicaraguan University Alliance] this electoral farse is the predictable consequence of an accelerated process of the degeneration of Sandinism. The Ortega-Murillo regime a long time ago has taken for granted the large popular majority. They do not even make demagogical efforts to try to convince the people, they opted to terrorize them and thus hold on to power. The discourse of the tyrant Ortega was a primary indication: he called for confrontation and only addressed his small and fanaticized base, the harshest part of Sandinism.
The people did not participate in the electoral farce, and those few who participated did it under the coercion of the Sandinista Front of National Liberation (FSLN). Sandinism has no compunction about openly showing how they manipulated the entire electoral process. Along these lines, the role of the collaborationist parties – the Constitutional Liberal Party (PLC), the Liberal Independent Party (PLI), the Nicaraguan Liberal Allliance (ALN), the Alliance for the Republic (APRE) and the Nicaraguan Christian Path (CCN), called by the people “mosquito parties” – was more shameful than customary.
The Ortega-Murillo regime committed all its abuses in a desperate manner, because in spite of the generalized environment of terror, most of the people resisted. Daniel Ortega and his regime lack legitimacy not because of these elections, but because of all the violations of the Rule of Law and Human Rights that it has been committing since it came to government in 2007. We cannot surrender because of the victims of those violations, for those murdered, exiled, jailed and for all those who have suffered the atrocities of Sandinism. Lesther Alemán and Max Jerez, leaders and founders of the AUN, as well as the more than a hundred leaders of the opposition, are in the dungeons of the dictatorship because of this struggle. We will not let them down! We are going to continue demanding their freedom.
The Ortega-Murillo regime, more than anyone, knows what it is to be a minority. Today they counted themselves! Let the Sandinista dictatorship know: our aspirations, our dreams, our hopes, all our projects do not fit in their voting centers, in their vote reception centers, in their ballot boxes. Sooner or later, the light will come back to Nicaragua and the darkness of this regime will end. In Democracy, Justice and Liberty we are going to build the country that we want.
AUN* there is hope!
AUN* we continue in resistance
AUN* is struggle!
Managua, November 7, 2021
*the acronym AUN spells out the word “still”