Jaime Aráuz Centeno is 54 years old and for almost half of his life he has been mayor for the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) in the El Tuma-La Dalia municipality, Matagalpa department. He held the position until this Tuesday, January 17. He would have resigned for health reasons, but others point out that he was removed by the regime of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo.
Francis Lucila Tórrez Blandón, who had been appointed vice mayor for the period 2023-2027, will take over as mayor; but the FSLN still hasn’t defined who will be vice mayor.
In the party ranks, there are those who point to councilor Jimmy Espinoza Gonzales, who has been secretary of the Council since 2015, when Melania del Carmen Rivera Chavarría was removed from that position, which caused a dozen Sandinista councilors to resign their posts.
The versions of the fall
Aráuz Centeno has mainly heart problems, aggravated since covid-19 reached him, and since then the doctors have insisted that he should rest. It is the version in which three people linked to the FSLN in El Tuma-La Dalia and the now ex-mayor agreed.
However, the organization Urnas Abiertas pointed out this Thursday, January 19, that its citizen networks confirmed the “removal” of Aráuz Centeno, and also point out that “the local population pointed out that his management was not very transparent.”
Aráuz Centeno was 22 years old when the FSLN, during the first regime of Daniel Ortega, appointed him coordinator of the government junta for the El Tuma-La Dalia municipality, created with the Political-Administrative Division Law approved on August 17, 1989. .
In 1990, when Violeta Barrios de Chamorro won the elections for Ortega, the El Tuma-La Dalia Council appointed Aráuz Centeno as mayor, and he built a leadership that allowed him to be re-elected in 1996.
For the periods 2001-2005 and 2005-2009, the mayors were Manuel Zúñiga Laguna and Maryan José Ruiz, respectively. Both from the FSLN.
In 2008, Aráuz Centeno was re-elected for the 2009-2013 term and remained mayor in subsequent terms. In the 2022 elections, he was appointed to a fourth consecutive term, but he only lasted seven exact days in office.
Text originally posted by CSI Mosaic
