34 representative of the community, people must enjoy prestige and be of sound judgment. The communities support their candidates by providing means of transport or assuming these people’s social responsibilities while they are working as candidates and visiting the communities in the course of their electoral campaign. One of the factors that hinder the political participation of the people of the Atlantic Coast relates to the absence of offices that are “constantly registering voters.” There are also problems with the electoral roll, because the members of these communities have life styles that lead them to move from place to place in order to extract resources from the forest without exhausting them. Another factor that hampers their political participation is that the electoral documents are not issued in indigenous languages, but only in Spanish; in many cases, this is a problem owing to lack of education. The rules of the Electoral Act “respond to a global vision of the country” and to the State’s intention that all political parties should comply with these rules, disregarding the cultural characteristics of the people of the Caribbean Coast. YATAMA was forced to adopt organizational forms, such as that of a political party, which do not correspond to the “oral tradition of these people.” When they heard that the YATAMA candidates had been excluded from the 2000 elections, the communities began to question these candidates, asking them what they had done wrong; what problems had they encountered. Many candidates reacted by considering that they themselves were insufficiently qualified to take part. Some candidates did not return to their communities for two years, because “they felt they had no moral standing,” owing to the debts they had incurred. b) Expert witnesses proposed by the State 2. Carlos Antonio Hurtado Cabrera, head of the Secretariat for Atlantic Coast Affairs of the Presidency of the Republic The Secretariat for Atlantic Coast Affairs of the Presidency of the Republic was created at the end of July 2004, in view of the Atlantic Coast’s strategic importance for the whole country, and the importance of its biodiversity and multiethnicity. The Atlantic Coast covers 50% of national territory. Likewise, the need was felt to give coherence and effectiveness to the actions of institutions active on the Atlantic Coast. A budget of fifty million dollars has been allocated to this region. The President of the Republic has modified the traditional model of relations with the Atlantic Coast, within the framework of the political autonomy that the regions of the Atlantic Coast enjoy, and with the indigenous communities. The new model is based on the need for permanent two-way communication: from the central Government to the regions and from the regions to the central Government, using communications that respect the special characteristics and institutions of these autonomous regions. One of the functions of the Secretariat for Atlantic Coast Affairs is to establish relations with the indigenous communities. In this regard, during the electoral campaign, the President of Nicaragua signed an agreement with the YATAMA political organization establishing various commitments. YATAMA “is the principal indigenous political organization in the country” and the indigenous communities’ main spokesperson before the Government. The central