What is happening in Nicaragua?

Gioconda Belli: Don't forget Nicaragua 1:32

(CNN Spanish) -

Five months before the presidential elections in Nicaragua, the justice of the Central American country has detained more than a dozen opponents and pre-candidates whom it accuses of allegedly committing acts that threaten national sovereignty, raising serious doubts about the legitimacy of the elections and generating international reactions.

This is what we know about the situation in Nicaragua:

The controversial Law 1055

Approved in December 2020 by the National Assembly, the law presumably seeks to "defend the rights of the people to independence, sovereignty and self-determination for peace" and has been used mainly to detain different opponents of the government of Daniel Ortega.

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Among the 14 detained at the moment there are four presidential candidates for the elections that will take place on November 7, and in which Ortega seeks to be reelected for the fourth time.

Alemán: In Nicaragua, jail or death to those who protest 6:33

Of the total, 13 have been arrested within the framework of Law 1055: these are the presidential candidates Arturo Cruz, Félix Maradiaga and Juan Sebastián Chamorro;

the opposition leaders José Pallais, José Adán Aguerri and Violeta Granera;

the director of Banpro Grupo Promerica Luis Alberto Rivas Anduray;

former Sandinista guerrillas Dora María Téllez Argüello, Hugo Torres Jiménez and Víctor Hugo Tinoco and activists Tamara Dávila, Ana Margarita Vigil Guardián and Suyen Barahona.

In addition, the presidential candidate Cristiana Chamorro was accused by the Public Ministry of alleged "abusive management" and money laundering during her tenure with the Violeta Barrios Foundation and placed under house arrest.

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After the accusation, Chamorro said: “I am not an official candidate and they intend to inhibit me.

How afraid of change they are.

United, Nicaragua will once again be a republic.

Ortega seeks a fourth consecutive term

Ortega, leader of the Sandinista National Liberation Front, was part of the government in the midst of the Sandinista Revolution between 1979 and 1985. He was then elected president for the first time between 1985 and 1990, and finally returned to power in 2007 after winning the November elections. 2006.

Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega and his wife, Vice President Rosario Murillo, during a ceremony in Managua on August 29, 2018 (Inti Ocon / AFP / Getty Images).

Since then he has remained in government and was later reelected twice, after a constitutional reform that eliminated the limits on reelection for successive terms in Nicaragua.

The Nicaraguan Center for Human Rights (Cenidh) condemned this Monday the "brutal escalation of repression and persecution against social and political leaders."

"It is clear that the Ortega Murillo regime intends to stay in power at the cost of terror."

The vice president and first lady of Nicaragua, Rosario Murillo, questioned the government's critics: "In how many countries and in how many organizations have we seen how people who run over the towns, looting, stealing, are taken to justice."

The reaction of international organizations

On Tuesday the Organization of American States (OAS) approved the resolution "Situation in Nicaragua" in which it expresses its "alarm" at the recent deterioration of the political environment in that country and demanded electoral reforms to guarantee free and transparent elections.

Nicaragua rejects OAS resolution on arrests 3:06

The OAS resolution was approved with the support of 26 countries, with three votes against and five abstentions, including Mexico and Argentina.

The United States, which voted in favor of the declaration, expressed this Wednesday through Secretary of State Antony Blinken that the resolution represents “a clear message of support for the Nicaraguan people and their fight for free elections.

"It is time for the Ortega and Murillo regime to change course," Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement released Wednesday.

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On the other hand, the Nicaraguan Foreign Minister, Denis Moncada, has said about the international requests that the government "will not admit interference or impositions, or that they force us to break our legal system."

With information from Mario Medrano, Tatiana Arias, Rafael Romo

Crisis in NicaraguaDaniel Ortega