Youth Vote
Viewed as ‘Wild Card'

By Eric Sabo
Nica Times Staff
esabo@ticotimes.net

MANAGUA – Juana Duarte, an 18-year-old university student from the northern city of Estelí, has strong opinions about the upcoming presidential elections.

She worries that a victory by Daniel Ortega, presidential candidate for the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN), the revolutionary movement that ruled Nicaragua before she was born, could mean the same type of hardships that her parents remember bitterly from the 1980s.

“Anyone has got to be better than him,” she says.

Yet despite her anti-Ortega disposition, Duarte, like many other citizens her age, is a potential no-show at the polls on Nov. 5.

“I don't think I will vote,” she admits with a shrug. “None of them are going to make a difference to me.”

After three national elections since emerging from a decade-long counterrevolutionary war, Nicaragua's young democracy is now facing a new challenge: an increasingly hard-to-predict and tough-to-mobilize group of young voters.

More than 70% of Nicaraguans are under age 30, and at least a quarter of the potential voters in this year's elections are between 16 and 30, according to Nicaragua's Supreme Electoral Council (CSE). The legal age to vote in Nicaragua is 16.

With little previous electoral experience, and few opinion polls tracking the voting opinions of younger citizens, the youth vote is perhaps the biggest wild card in this year's tightly contested elections.

Plus, in a vote that is expected to be decided by a couple of percentage points, even a small surge in youth turnout could tip the scales in favor of one of the leading candidates, some experts claim.

“Young people have the power to decide this election,” said Nehemías López of Central America Fes, a political foundation that supports youth causes.

Youth Abstention

Democracy Rocks: Nicaraguan group Perrozompopo performs at a get-out-the vote concert in León. Photo Courtesy of “Break the Silence”

Young people also have a reputation for not making it to the ballot box.

A recent study by the University of Central America (UCA) in Managua found that 44% of Nicaraguans under the age of 25 did not vote in the 2004 municipal elections, compared to a 30% abstention rate for voters 25 and older.

But as the heated presidential campaign evokes memories of past conflicts, college-age activists are taking their own approach to getting their issues heard.

Among the most prominent mobilization campaigns – and certainly the loudest – is “Break the Silence,” Nicaragua's answer to MTV's famous “Rock the Vote” campaign, which has encouraged young voters in the United States to participate in recent presidential elections.

Gustav Montiel, who heads the group “Nicaraguan Democratic Youth,” is spearheading the campaign with a series of rock concerts and flashy public-service ads to try to get young people interested in the November elections, and politics beyond.

“Any candidate in these elections, whether it's for legislature or the presidency, is going to face a lot of young people,” Montiel said. “They have to have plans (for youth) if they want to win our support.”

‘Reggaetón' the Vote

Montiel's group has organized a total of six outdoor concerts, most recently in the northern town of Matagalpa.

Popular Nicaraguan bands perform against a backdrop of television screens that look borrowed from Irish rock group U2, with “Break the Silence and Vote” messages flashing behind the stage.

The youth-oriented campaign is financed by the U.S. International Republican Institute (IRI), a venerable organization affiliated with the U.S. Republican Party and headed by conservative luminaries such as Jeanne Kirkpatrick. In the 1980s, Kirkpatrick squared off against Ortega and the Sandinistas when she was the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations. She is now an IRI board member.

The IRI, which has drawn criticism for its electoral activities in Nicaragua, is not shy about promoting some political parties over others. The group states on its Web site that it has partnered with “Break the Silence” as a way of “exposing the corruption of Pacto forces,” an allusion to the notorious power-sharing accord between former Presidents Ortega and Arnoldo Alemán, party boss of the Liberal Constitutional Party (PLC).

The Web site claims that each organization the IRI backs in Nicaragua, “has endeavored to counter the Pacto forces of the FSLN and the PLC in the run up to the November elections.”

Montiel, however, insists that Break the Silence only promotes greater voter participation, not any specific party.

“We give every candidate a fair chance,” he said, adding that the IRI has “never told us what do.”

The ultimate goal, he says, is to build greater youth interest in democracy.

“We tell young Nicaraguans to get informed, ask questions and vote,” he says.

The Final Poll

All five political parties competing for the presidency have made their pitch to younger voters, with varying degrees of success.

Pundits claim that, traditionally, the FLSN has had the best organization for attracting a cadre of young, idealistic supporters.

But a number of former Sandinista youth leaders have recently defected to the Sandinista Renovatation Movement (MRS), a breakaway party that includes popular vice-presidential candidate Carlos Mejía Godoy, the famed revolutionary singer whose music is in every Nicaraguan's CD collection.

Pro-business candidates also appear to be picking up some youth support, especially in tourist-oriented areas such as Granada and San Juan del Sur, where many see Eduardo Montealegre, presidential hopeful for the Nicaraguan Liberal Alliance (ALN), as the best option for attracting foreign investment and higher-paying jobs.

José Antonio Alvarado, vice-presidential candidate for the PLC, contends that young voters have also expressed a lot of support for his party's election bid, and suggests that support could be even greater if the PLC spread its message better.

“Young men and women come up and tell me that the PLC has the best proposals, but they always ask: ‘How come we haven't heard of them?'” Alvarado said.

The real test of support will come in the next few weeks. At a recent Break the Silence concert in Granada, Victor Arias, 23, said that he was still unsure of who he planned to vote for in November.

“I don't know,” he said. “There's not really any good choices.”

Between bands, a young announcer took the stage and implored thousands of young people at the concert to make their voices heard at the ballot box. The next rock group started to play and the crowd errupted. Arias seemed to be enjoying the show.

“This is pretty cool,” he said.