The publication in The Gazette this Thursday, September 22 of the final list of candidates for mayors, deputy mayors and councilors, endorsed the Sandinista Front’s in all the municipalities of Nicaragua, particularly Jalapa, Nueva Segovia, where 21 Sandinista militants have been in jail since September 15, for protesting against the imposition as candidate of Eddy Enrique Gutiérrez Zavala, current secretary of the municipal council of this commune.
Twenty of these militants, among whom are paramilitaries from the Ortega regime who participated in the repression operations against the citizen protests of 2018, are at the headquarters of the Directorate of Judicial Assistance (DAJ) in Ocotal.
The former Ortega mayor Humberto Alejandro Pérez Largaespada, was sent to the DAJ headquarters in Managua, known as El Chipote, where the dictatorship is holding more than 40 political prisoners kidnapped in the context of the electoral farce of November 2021. He is accused of being the leader of the Sandinista protests in Jalapa.
Relatives have not been able to see him
Relatives of Largaespada, 56, still do not know the conditions in which he is in the El Chipote cells, in Managua, because they have been prevented from seeing him. Nor has a formal accusation been filed against him.
At 10:00 am on September 15, a group of 40 historical Sandinista militants and combatants They came to the house of the red and black party in Jalapa, to demand that Gutiérrez Zavala’s imposed candidacy be withdrawn.
That same afternoon, police agents arrested ex-mayor Largaespada and the other 20 Sandinista militants who participated in the storming of the party’s house at his home. A hunt for the rest of the participants was also unleashed, for which many chose to flee their homes for fear of being captured.
“Humberto (Largaespada) was taken by the police that same day to the delegation of the city of Ocotal (head of the department of Nueva Segovia) and later transferred at night to El Chipote, in Managua. They still have the others (Sandinistas) in Ocotal”said one of the close relatives of the former Sandinista mayor, who added that he did not participate in the attempted FSLN takeover of the house.
Sandinista Front militants stated that the root of this internal clash is the political rivalry between Largaespada and the current Sandinista political secretary of Jalapa, Octavio Álvarez.
“Here there are good Sandinistas that the party does not give them opportunities, but they always put them up,” said Javier Martínez Lazo, a well-known Sandinista Front militant in Jalapa.
As a result of this confrontation, in Jalapa they have graffiti and posters appeared in some streets of the city against the candidacy of Gutiérrez Zavala, who has Francisca Damaris Sánchez as his running mate,
Largaespada, who has been mayor of the municipality of Jalapa for several periods, has faced several trials, accused of alleged acts of corruption within that municipality. These complaints have been promoted by other former Ortega mayors, including Omar Vílchez, who also faced accusations in his period as head of that commune, but the Judicial Power shelved the cases because neither the Public Ministry nor the National Police thoroughly investigated the causes. of accusations.
FSLN recycled 118 of its mayors
An analysis published by CONFIDENCIAL detailed that the Sandinista Front will “recycle” 118 of its mayors as candidates to continue governing in their communes.
The municipalist expert Silvio Prado, during an appearance on the program Tonight —streamed on YouTube and Facebook due to the censorship of the dictatorship—explained that the finger with the mayors of the Sandinista Front “shows that the Sandinista Front does not have a policy of promoting cadres, that at the local level there is no replacement”.
“What it shows you is a poverty in the Sandinista Front’s cadre of cadres at the local level, a stagnation of the Sandinista elites. That means that there is a blockage in the elites, which does not allow the new generations, the new activists, the new cadres to come up.”added the specialist.
Regarding the protests in Jalapa, Prado pointed out that they were the product of intolerance within the FSLN with any dissent towards the decisions of the leadership of the red and black party.
“What is happening is that they are applying the same medicine to the members of the Sandinista Front that they apply to the rest of the population of Nicaragua, where there is no right to protest. These militants who protested are being given a taste of their own medicine. There it is shown that the dictatorial regime not only represses those who do not think like them, but also those who do not behave like automatons, like sheep”he underlined.
The 118 Sandinista mayorss that seek to be recycled are part of the 141 municipalities in which Ortega governs in Nicaragua thanks to the electoral fraud machine that operates in the Supreme Electoral Council, in favor of the regime of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo.
Among these recycled mayors will be included the mayor of Managua, Reyna Rueda, who will seek to be re-elected for one more term together with the deputy mayor of the Nicaraguan capital, the sports writer Enrique Armas.
Managua, the main political square in Nicaragua after the Presidency and with almost two million inhabitants, is administered by the ruling Sandinista National Liberation Front since 2001.
The list of 118 candidates for mayor who will seek to repeat in office for another term, includes 100 mayors elected in the last elections, according to the data analysis carried out by the CONFIDENTIAL.
Photo: Confidential | Courtesy.
Mayors sanctioned
Among the 118 Sandinista candidates for mayor14 govern the same number of departmental capitals (provinces) in Nicaragua, out of a total of 17. Among them are the Sandinista mayors Francisco Valenzuela (Estelí), Leónidas Centeno (Jinotega) and Sadrach Zeledón (Matagalpa), sanctioned by the United States and singled out for committing human rights abuses in the context of the crisis that Nicaragua has been experiencing since April 2018.
These three mayors govern in their municipalities since 2009. Previously they had done so in the period 2001-2005, that is, they are seeking their fifth and fourth consecutive term.
For the municipal elections of 2004, the law prohibited the consecutive re-election of both the president and the mayors, however that lock was declared inapplicable in 2009 by Sandinista judges of the Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Court of Justice.
In 2014, the Sandinista majority in the National Assembly (Parliament) reformed the Constitution and legalized indefinite reelection for both the president and mayors.
The FSLN, whose general secretary is President Daniel Ortega, heads an alliance that includes nine political parties, four political movements and two personalities. They currently govern in 141 of the 153 municipalities of Nicaragua, including Managua.
They also include five municipalities that until this year were managed by Citizens for Freedom party members (CxL) and that they were stripped of their positions under the argument that this group had been outlawed a year ago, prior to the 2021 general elections, in which President Ortega was re-elected with his main rivals in prison.
The Sandinistas will participate in the municipal elections on November 6, along with five other parties considered “collaborators” of the ruling party by the excluded opposition.
According to official data, at least 4.4 million inhabitants, out of a total of 6.6 million Nicaraguans, will be able to participate in the municipal elections, who will be able to elect 153 mayors, 153 deputy mayors and more than 6,000 councillors.
***With information from EFE.
