Sandinista Renovation Movement

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The MRS flag

Nicaragua
This article is part of the series: Politics and government of Nicaragua

President of Nicaragua Daniel Ortega National Assembly Political parties Elections General election 2006 Departments Foreign relations
Other countries · Politics Portal view • talk • edit

The Sandinista Renovation Movement (Movimiento de Renovación Sandinista or MRS, in Spanish) is a Nicaraguan political party founded by dissidents of the Sandinista National Liberation Front on May 18, 1995, on Augusto César Sandino's 100th anniversary. Sandino's legacy was claimed by the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN), which overthrew the Somoza dictatorship in 1979 and the MRS took Sandino's hat as a symbol in their new flag.

One of the founding leaders of MRS was Sergio Ramirez, Nicaragua's vice-president from 1985 to 1990 under the Sandinistas government. Ramirez ran as the MRS presidential candidate in the 1996 elections. The MRS got 1.33% of the votes and got 1 seat (out of 91) in the Nicaraguan Parliament.

[edit] The alliance with the FSLN

In the 2001 presidential elections, as well as in the 2000 and 2004 municipal elections, the MRS joined forces with the FSLN. Though it lost the presidential elections in 2001, the FSLN-MRS alliance won the majority of the municipalities in the 2000 and 2004 elections, including Managua, the capital, and almost every major city in the country.

For the 2006 elections, the MRS presented Herty Lewites, the mayor of Managua (2000-2004), as their presidential candidate in the FSLN's internal elections. Shortly after Lewites and his followers were expelled from the FSLN.

[edit] The Alianza Herty 2006

The MRS decided to abandon the five year old alliance with the FSLN and run alone in the forthcoming elections with Herty Lewites as their Presidential candidate in 2006. Lewites chose Edmundo Jarquín as his running mate for the vice presidency.

On July 2, 2006, Lewites died of a massive heart attack at the Hospital Metropolitano "Vivian Pellas" in Managua, aged 66, four months prior to the 2006 national elections. Lewites was polling in third place before passing away, trailing closely behind Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega and Eduardo Montealegre.

Jarquín took Lewites' place and picked the folk musician Carlos Mejía Godoy as his vice-presidential running mate. The MRS continued to pole in third place (Election Poll Results, September 13, 2006).

The Sandinista Renovation Movement alliance, also known as the Herty 2006 Alliance in allusion to Herty Lewites, ran in this election together with the Nicaraguan Social Christian Party (PSC), Nicaraguan Socialist Party (PSN), Nicaraguan Green Party (ecologists), Party for Citizen Action (PAC) and other minor social and political movements.

At the November 2006 elections, however, Jarquin came in fourth place, receiving 6% of the vote, far behind third place candidate José Rizo of the Constitutional Liberal Party. The party won 5 of the 92 seats in congressional elections.