§ Lord Chitnisasked Her Majesty's Government:
Whether they will state, given the Prime Minister's comment on 26th February [Commons Hansard col. 1721], in what respects they consider the 1984 Nicaraguan election, to which they sent no observers, was more flawed than the one in E1 Salvador in the same year, to which they did send observers, who found it deficient in various ways.
§ The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Armed Forces (Lord Trefgarne)The great majority of observers including our own official observers judged the Salvadorean elections to have been an adequate means of allowing the people a free choice of their preferred candidate for president. We considered the Nicaraguan elections as flawed because of the conditions of the campaign. There were reports that, over a period of many months, the opposition parties were effectively intimidated and often physically harassed. Many observers referred to the control and censorship of the media.