A former contra and a beauty queen have been elected this Wednesday by an opposition group in Nicaragua as members of the presidential formula ahead of the general elections scheduled for next November.
Óscar Sobalvarro, former head of the counterrevolution - the guerilla financed by Washington to overthrow the Sandinista government in the eighties - and Miss Nicaragua of 2017, Berenice Quezada, are the candidates of the Citizens for Freedom (CxL) party to confront Daniel Ortega, who aspires to his fourth consecutive term since he returned to power in 2007.
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The news has generated stupor and mockery on social networks, at a time when the country is going through a difficult political crisis, with at least 29 opponents jailed, including the eight presidential hopefuls with more options to face Daniel Ortega, a brutal repression from the State to any demonstration or criticism and thousands of Nicaraguans thrown into exile due to political persecution.
"We are the only hope of opposition to the regime for all those Nicaraguans who yearn to move from dictatorship to democracy through civic struggle with our vote," said Kitty Monterrey, national president of CxL, this afternoon, justifying her candidates .
This political party has the legal backing to participate in the elections, although it is viewed with suspicion by part of the opposition, given its persistence in continuing in an electoral process that is considered flawed, both in Nicaragua and abroad. Daniel Ortega controls the entire Supreme Electoral Council (CSE), the judges of the Electoral Tribunal and the regional heads of the body and has imposed reforms to the system that have allowed him to criminalize and imprison those who have expressed an interest in participating in the elections. Among the eight aspiring candidates to stand up to him arrested is Cristiana Chamorro, daughter of former president Violeta Chamorro and the national hero Pedro Joaquín Chamorro (an opposition voice and assassinated by Somoza in 1978), who marked the majority of the electorate's preferences according to polls.
We are the only hope of opposition to the regime for all those Nicaraguans who yearn to transition from dictatorship to democracy through civic struggle with our vote.
- Kitty Monterrey (@ kittymonterrey7) July 28, 2021
The presidential formula of the
Miss
and the excontra was proclaimed this Wednesday in a party assembly held in a hotel in Managua, where the territorial leaders of CxL, a party heir to what was the political movement founded by the banker Eduardo Montealegre, met. who faced Ortega and lost in the November 2006 elections. "Some people in Nicaragua may be wondering why in this situation of repression, violation of human rights and attack on freedoms we present our candidacies," explained Monterrey, once right hand of Montealegre. "We presented these candidacies because we do not want to give the way to the regime and that it can say that the opposition did not want to stand [in the elections]," he justified.
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While this political group was holding its assembly, the Nicaraguan Parliament, also controlled by Ortega, canceled the legal status of 24 civil society organizations, including 15 medical associations that have strongly criticized the government's handling of the pandemic of covid-19, whose lethality was initially denied by Ortega and his wife and vice president, Rosario Murillo.
The deputies of the Sandinista Front, who have the majority of the chamber, argued that they have made this decision because the organizations "have failed to comply with their legal and statutory obligations."
It is, human rights defenders have affirmed, a new blow to freedom of assembly and expression in the Central American country, where critical voices are fiercely persecuted.
Colombia calls its ambassador for consultations
Wednesday was one more day of strong headlines in Nicaragua. In addition to the appointment of the
Miss
and the excontra and the dispossession of the NGOs, the Government of Colombia has reported that it has called its ambassador in Managua, Alfredo Rangel, for consultations, in rejection of what it considers a “systematic persecution against the political opposition, journalism and leadership social in Nicaragua ”. Colombia is the third country on the continent to call its ambassadors for consultations, following the decision of Mexico and Argentina, which maintain a common diplomacy in the face of the crisis in Nicaragua. Both countries reported in mid-June that they called their ambassadors for consultations to explain what they consider to be the “worrying political-legal actions carried out by the Nicaraguan government in recent days, which have put at risk the integrity and freedom of various figures of the opposition".
And while Bogotá was taking this diplomatic measure, in Washington the Congressional Foreign Relations Committee approved the bipartisan initiative known as the Renacer Law, which had already been approved by the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee, thereby complying with the process to move on to their discussion in plenary chamber. The legislation gives the government of President Joe Biden a wide margin to take actions that allow for pressure a change in the Nicaraguan regime, including the veto of loans from international financial institutions and sanctions against those it considers to have participated in the violation of rights. humans. The bill also requires the US Administration to review Nicaragua's participation in CAFTA,the trade agreement that opens the US market to Nicaraguan products. An important point of the regulation is that it advocates greater control of the Ortega Murillo family's businesses and Russia's activities in Nicaragua, mainly over the sales of military equipment made by Moscow to the Ortega government.
Washington maintains strong pressure against the Ortega regime, which it has defined as a "dictatorship."
On July 12, the United States announced restrictions on the visas of 100 members of the National Assembly and the Managua judiciary.
The decision, according to the Secretary of the State Department, Antony Blinken, through a statement, is directed against those who "make it possible for the Ortega-Murillo regime to attack democracy and human rights."
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