Between the weekend and Monday, the government of President Daniel Ortega occupied the premises of five opposition mayors’ offices in Nicaragua, through police operations, denounced the President of the Citizens for Liberty Party, Kitty Monterreyexiled in Costa Rica.
The Sandinista government has not made a statement so far, after the occupation of the premises and the dismissal classified as “illegal” of the mayors who were elected in 2017 under the banner of the Citizens for Freedom (CxL) party.
Regarding the measure, however, in statements to Nicaraguan media Mayor Oscar Gadea Tinoco, of Santa María de Pantasma, said he received a notification from the Nicaraguan Institute for Municipal Development (Inifom), indicating that the mayor’s office was occupied because the political status of the party that supported it had been canceled since 2021.
In this regard, the opposition leader Kitty Monterrey, who classified the event as “a very serious attack against the popular will and municipal autonomy,” indicated that the mayors “are not officials of a party, but rather are municipal authorities elected by their citizens and thus They have shown it during their administration”.
“Today the flags of the ruling party will be hoisted in these mayor’s offices in another act of disrespect for citizens and institutions. With these acts, the regime is confirming that it has no interest in rehabilitating the electoral route and not even in keeping the appearance of legality in the next municipal votes,” Monterrey told the Voice of America.
Occupied mayoralties were key during the war against the Sandinista revolution
The mayoralties occupied by the government belonged to the Ciudadanos por la Libertad party and belong to Santa María de Pantasma, El Cuá, San Sebastián de Yalí, El Almendro and Murra, all located in the north of the country.
The former guerrilla combatant and former presidential candidate Luis Fley, explained to the voice of america that the mayoralties taken over the weekend and on Monday are located in the historical territory of the so-called “Contra”, or war corridor, as it has been known since the 1980s by the guerrillas who formed to fight against the Sandinista revolution.
“The bases there, they are all contras and practically what they did was that, when Daniel Ortega suppressed or hid the Nicaraguan Resistance party (made up of former counterrevolutionary guerrillas), the contras decided to go in other boxes. So they ran in Citizens for Freedom and other parties. The majority of the population in that Contra territory does not agree with the Sandinista Front party because of the atrocities committed in the 1980s,” Fley said by telephone to the VOA.
According to the organization Urnas Abiertas, unofficially it is known that new authorities have been designated which have not been officially communicated nor have they been sworn in by the Supreme Electoral Council.
Luis Fley says in this regard that the new possible mayors would represent “a minority headed by the Sandinista Front and not the will of the residents expressed in the past elections in which they chose to go for a booth and elect the candidate for mayor.”
“All the candidates for mayor in that area are children and relatives of members of the Nicaraguan Resistance, the Contras, but with this Ortega has already established the single party in Nicaragua,” lamented Fley, who indicated that the country is already assimilating to Cuba and Korea. from North.
According to open polls, Of the 153 municipalities in the country, only 18 were not under the banner of the Sandinista Front, which is the ruling party.
“[Esto]represents the definitive elimination of municipal autonomy, in an illegal process, with abuse of authority and without respecting due process. As in 2021, the regime annihilates the electoral process before it begins. In addition, this coup consolidates the totalitarianism of the dictatorship that seeks absolute control of the country,” Urnas Abiertas said in a statement.
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