Tortilla con Sal, November 4th 2012
Nicaragua's municipal elections have taken place in an atmosphere of great calm and apparent efficiency. Almost all the Juntas Receptoras de Votos opened on time at around 7.00am.
Some people had been queuing since around 5.30am in order to vote. But most people seems to have voted between 10.00am and noon and from 2.00pm onwards.
The turn out is about the same as for the last municipal elections in 2008 and so will probably end up being around 55% or thereabouts nationally.
The only serious potential problem reported by the CSE was caused by the opposition Liberal party election officials of the PLI and the PLC either not turning up at all to their Juntas Receptoras de Votos or else abandoning the mesas electorales after they'd been sworn in.
The apparent objective was to attempt declare those JRVs null. But the electoral law clearly establishes the procedure to follow in such cases and this particular ill-conceived attempted sabotage of the vote was a non-starter. It's not clear how many mesas electorales were affected by that manouevre
Voting will continue until 6.00pm unless there are people still queuing to vote. In that case, the respective JRVs will stay open until everyone waiting to do so will have voted
Preliminary results can be expected at around 10.00pm.