The ruling Sandinista Front will recycle 118 mayoral candidates from the 141 mayoralties it controls in Nicaraguaaccording to a data analysis conducted by CONFIDENTIAL to the provisional list of candidates for mayors, deputy mayors and councilors, registered for the municipal elections of November 6, 2022, summoned belatedly and in silence by the Supreme Electoral Council (CSE)also under control of the ruling party.
The list of 118 recycled mayoral candidates includes 101 mayors who intend to continue in office for another consecutive term; in addition 11 deputy mayors and a municipal secretary who seek to assume as holders; four of five “mayors” who usurped the mayors assaulted in July 2022 to the Ciudadanos por la Libertad (CxL) partyand a mayor elected in 2017 in the CxL box who was unknown by that party, but remained in office and now appears registered under the FSLN box.
In addition to the 118 recycled mayoral candidates, there are another 83 vice mayoral candidates from the FSLN seeking re-election.: 80 appointed by the CSE in 2017 and 4 who later took office in mayorships intervened by operators of the ruling party. There is also a former deputy mayor elected in 2017 under the CxL box, who now appears registered by the Alianza Liberal Nicaragüense (ALN), designated as a collaborationist party of the FSLN.
The provisional list of candidates for mayors, deputy mayors and councilors was published on September 13 by the CSE, in the 172nd edition of La Gacetawith candidates from six parties: the Constitutionalist Liberal Party (PLC), the ruling FSLN, the Yatama regional indigenous party, ALN, the Alliance for the Republic (APRE), and the Independent Liberal Party (PLI).
These six parties are the same ones registered in the general elections of 2021, in which Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo canceled the legal status of the last opposition organizations and imprisoned seven presidential candidates and dozens of political and civic leaders, to annul any electoral competition. and to be re-elected in power, in elections unknown to the democratic international community, which described them as an “electoral farce”.
Managua recycles formula with Reyna Rueda and Enrique Armas
A total of 16 candidates for mayor of the 17 main cities in Nicaragua are recycled candidates, confirmed CONFIDENTIAL.
In Managua, the country’s capital and the main political square among the 153 municipalities, the ticket made up of Mayor Reyna Rueda Alvarado and Enrique Armas Rosales is seeking re-election for a second and third consecutive term, respectively. Rueda obtained the position of mayor in the local elections of 2017 and Armas has been deputy mayor since 2012, when he came in formula with the now former mayor Daysi Torres.
They repeat sanctioned mayors of Estelí, Matagalpa and Jinotega
Also the three political operators of the FSLN in Estelí, Matagalpa and Jinotega, described as “super mayors” and sanctioned by the US government for directing the Ortega repression and massacre in their departments in 2018, they seek his re-election for a new consecutive term in local power.
Francisco Valenzuela Blandón, from Estelí, and Sadrack Zeledón Rocha, from Matagalpa, governed for the first time in their municipalities after being elected in the first municipal elections in Nicaragua in 2000. Later, they left local power in 2004, because the consecutive re-election was not allowed. Their quota of power was continued as deputies of the National Assembly and political secretaries of the FSLN. Later, they returned to the positions of mayor in 2008 and have remained in this position ever since, under the protection of the unconstitutional re-election sentence with which Ortega also imposed his re-election.
The list of sanctioned “super mayors” is completed by Leónidas Centeno, who governs Jinotega from 2008 to date, and seeks a fourth consecutive term in power.
In November 2021, after that year’s electoral farce, the United States issued new sanctions against FSLN operators. In the sanctions list, it included the mayors of Matagalpa, Estelí and Jinotega, singling them out for committing human rights abuses in 2018. The United States maintained that Zeledón is directly involved in the repression; that Valenzuela’s office ordered the placement of snipers to target the protesters in Estelí, and that Centeno is linked to the organs that acted against the protesters.
Since 2012, Valenzuela has controlled the Mayor’s Office of Estelí together with Melania Peralta, who again repeats the formula to add three terms in office. Zeledón also repeats with Yohaira Hernández Chirino, deputy mayor since 2017. And, for the third consecutive time, Centeno is in a formula with Rosalpina Pineda Zeledón, deputy mayor since 2012.
Eternal mayors in San Carlos, Somoto, Boaco and Juigalpa
At the top of eternal mayors who have been recycled is Jhonny Gutiérrez Novoa, mayor of San Carlos since 2008, who is going for a fourth consecutive term, despite the fact that the complaints against him have been public since 2017, when the FSLN bases rebelled against him. “finger”. Gutiérrez is once again in formula with the deputy mayor since 2012 Digna Emerita Áviles Dávila.
In Somoto, the capital city of the department of Madriz, the formula of Dania Sugey Martínez continues, who was vice mayor between 2012 and 2017, and was promoted to mayor in the following election and is going for a consecutive term. Together with her, Marcio Rivas Núñez was registered for her re-election, who was already mayor between 2004 and 2008 and from 2012 to 2017 and in the current period is as vice mayor for consecutive re-election.
Likewise, they are registered to perpetuate themselves in local power: Karla Espinoza Peña (since 2012) and Emigdio Sequeira García (since 2017), in Boaco; Aura Lyla Padilla Álvarez (since 2012) and Rolando Zapata Canales (since 2017), in Chinandega, and Erwing de Castilla Urbina (2000-2004 and again from 2017 to date) together with Martía Estelbina Baez Castilla (since 2017), in Juigalpa , Chontales.
Recycled candidates in Jinotepe, Ocotal and Bluefields
In Jinotepe: Mariano Madrigal Rodríguez, mayor since 2012, again in formula with Consuelo Mendieta Dávila, registered for a second consecutive term as vice mayor.
Similar occurs with Xiomara Tercero López (since 2012) in formula with Axel Antonio Gómez (since 2017), in Ocotal; Gustavo Castro Jo (since 2017) together with Carla Martin Brooks (from 2012 to 2017 as mayor and since 2017 as deputy mayor), in Bluefields, Autonomous Region of the South Caribbean Coast (RACCS).
They recycle the relays in Masaya, Granada, León and Rivas
In Masaya, Granada, León and Rivas the eternal mayors of previous periods were not registered, but those who relieved them for various reasons will repeat in power.
Mayor Orlando Noguera, from Masaya, died of covid-19 in mid-2020. Noguera was mayor for three terms: 2004-2008, 2012-2017 and would finish his third term this year. After his death, he was relieved by Deputy Mayor Janina Noguera Padilla, with whom he arrived in formula in 2017 and would now continue for the second consecutive term at the head of that commune.
In Granada, the mayor Julia Mena Rivera, who came to local power in 2012, was not registered for a third term, but her deputy mayor since 2017 Pedro Pablo Vargas, who was already performing the duties due to problems of mayor’s health
In the list of reelected mayors, the absence of the candidacy of the now former mayor of Rivas, Wilfredo Lópezwho ruled the city since 2008, but in mid-2022 he was sent to El Chipote cells, investigated for corruption. In her place, the FSLN registered Vilma Alicia Casanova, who relieved López of the Mayor’s Office, although with the position of general secretary, a figure that the laws do not contemplate in that city.
Who did surprise outside the list of recycled mayors was the still mayor of León, Róger Gurdián Vigil, who has governed that city for two consecutive terms, along with Guissela Lacayo Medrano, who does appear “recycled” as a candidate, going from vice mayor to incumbent candidate for the period 2022-2026, which would add three consecutive terms in the commune.
The mayoral candidates stolen from CxL
In July 2022, the Ortega regime executed a new assault on municipal autonomy by intervening in five mayoralties of the Citizens for Freedom party, dismissing their mayors and deputy mayors and imposing Ortega chips at the head of those municipalities. Now, the FSLN is seeking to formalize four of the five usurpers, registering them as candidates for mayor and vice mayor.
The five CxL mayoralties usurped last July were those of El Cuá, San Sebastián de Yalí and Santa María de Pantasma, in Jinotega; Murra, in Nueva Segovia, and El Almendro, in Río San Juan.
In addition, in October 2020, FSLN councilors —accompanied by the Police and paramilitaries— also took over the Wiwilí-Jinotega Mayor’s Office, which was in the power of the PLC.
Of these six assaulted mayoralties, the FSLN registered three of the five “mayors” who usurped CxL communes and the imposed “mayor” in Wiwilí-Jinotega.
The candidates are: Miriam Argüello Martínez and Pedro Hermógenes, in El Almendro; Carmen Medina Obando and Melvin Zelaya, in Pantasma, and Mario Zamora Hernández and Tatiana Zeledón Centeno, in Yalí.
In Wiwilí-Jinotega, the FSLN registered Helen Toruño Rodríguez, a Sandinista councilor who was imposed as mayor after the assault against the liberal Reyna Hernández.
In El Cuá, the FSLN “resurrects” the candidate Raúl Antonio Acevedo Lara, who was a Liberal mayor in that municipality and later crossed over to the FSLN. In addition, he registered Yadira Gurdián as deputy mayor, imposed in office after the assault on that CxL commune.
