This Saturday morning, the opposition Mayor’s Office of Santa María de Pantasma, municipality of Jinotega, woke up surrounded and surrounded by riot police. Citizens of this municipality, governed by the liberal mayor of Citizens for Freedom (CxL), Oscar Gadea Tinoco, warned about the intention of the regime to take over the municipality by force, as they have done in the past, with the capture of the mayor opponent of Mulukukú in 2018, Apolonio Fargas, and the takeover of the Jinotegan mayor of Wiwilí in 2020.
The Police closed access to the Mayor’s Office under the justification of “protecting” the municipality against the threat of tropical storm Bonnie, despite the fact that its territory is outside of danger zones and that the tropical cyclone has already left its territory. Nicaraguan this Saturday morning, according to the United States National Hurricane Center.
The situation of the opposition mayor, Oscar Gadea, and of the mayor’s office is unknown. According to sources from Citizens for Liberty, never before had the police surrounded the Santa María de Pantasma mayor’s office in such a way.
In an interview with Esta Semana and CONFIDENCIALpublished last week, Mayor Gadea warned of the persistent fear in the municipality about “the minute-by-minute risks” suffered by all officials of the Mayor’s Office in the face of the intentions of the ruling Sandinista Front to seize the entire national territory by force. .
Municipality never governed by sandinistas
Since it was elevated to a municipality in 1989, the town of Santa María de Pantasma has never been governed by the FSLN, and at the gates of a new electoral process “without conditions” or opposition political parties that dispute power with the Sandinista Front, the Mayor Gadea warned that the municipality could remain in the hands of the dictatorship after the November votes.
“The situation we have as mayors is more difficult than ever. We are without a political party, and the parties that are supposed to participate, if there are elections, are ‘stilt walkers’ or related to the Government”, warned Gadea.
The president of CxL, Kitty Monterrey, also said in an interview with Esta Semana and CONFIDENCIAL, that the next electoral elections, not yet called by the Supreme Electoral Council, will be a “mere formality” for the FSLN to take over the mayoralties of 153 municipalities of the country.
