The regime of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo completed this Monday, July 4, the assault against the five opposition mayors, headed by mayors elected by popular vote in the 2017 elections, who were candidates of the Citizens for Freedom (CxL) party.
Dozens of police agents, accompanied by paramilitaries, councilors from the Sandinista Front and delegates from the Nicaraguan Institute for Municipal Development (Inifom), took over the municipalities of San Sebastián de Yalí and El Cuá, in Jinotega; Murra, in Nueva Segovia; and El Almendro, in Río San Juan. Two days earlier, on July 2, the Mayor of Santa Maria de Pantasmain Jinotega, was also dispossessed.
The opposition mayor, Francisco Herrera, mayor deposed in Murra, recounted in an interview with CONFIDENTIALthat some fifty police officers arrived at his home around 5:00 am, asked for the keys to the vehicles and the municipal building, and “proceeded to take over the Mayor’s Office.”
“I did not leave my house to the Mayor’s Office but I learned that they surrounded the building, entered and waited for the arrival of the staff, who enters at eight in the morning, so that they would deliver everything to them,” explained Herrera.
In addition, he pointed out that the police officers justified the takeover of the commune, arguing that “we did not have a political party and that the Mayor’s Office should be represented by one.”
The mayor of Santa María de Pantasma, Oscar Gadea, also reported on July 3 that the Inifom justified the dispossession of that municipality and his dismissal alleging that CxL, a political group that he represented in the 2017 municipal elections, “does not have legal status.”
The CxL party was outlawed by the Supreme Electoral Council (CSE) in August 2021, prior to the general elections in which the Ortega-Murillo regime was re-elected without political competition for a fourth consecutive term. In that same month, the Inifom urgently summoned the mayors Óscar Gadea, of Santa María de Pantasma; Isidro Irías, from El Cuá, and Noel Moreno, from San Sebastián de Yalí, to “warn” them to be “careful”, now that they no longer had a party.
“The police occupation of the premises and the illegal dismissal of the elected mayors under the banner of Citizens for Freedom is a very serious attack against the popular will and municipal autonomy,” Kitty Monterrey, president of CxL, told the Spanish newspaper El País. exiled in Costa Rica.
Monterrey insisted that the mayors and councilors “legitimately elected in 2017 in the CxL box are not party officials, they are municipal authorities elected by their citizens and they have demonstrated this during their administration.”
Assaulted mayors are left in charge of Sandinista councilors
Herrera affirmed that the new mayor and deputy mayor imposed in the Mayor’s Office of Murra are the councilors of the Sandinista Front, Melba Valladares Colindres and Luis Arturo Averruz, respectively.
The mayor mentioned that, although he did not attend the Mayor’s Office, he learned that a delegate from Inifom, whom he identified as Gustavo Álvarez, participated in the takeover of the commune, according to what he was told by some of the workers who showed up at the building of the municipality to “hand over everything they were in charge of”.
The citizen organization Urnas Abiertas detailed, through a report released this Monday, that the new authorities imposed on the Mayor’s Office of Santa María de Pantasma are headed by Sandinista councilors Carmen Medina Obando and Melvin Zelaya, as mayor and deputy mayor, respectively.
In the commune of San Sebastián de Yalí, the document refers, Mario Zamora Hernández and deputy mayor Francisca Blandón Zamora were imposed as mayor. In El Cuá were Douglas González and Yadira Gurdián, mayor and vice mayor, respectively.
In El Almendro, Río San Juan, the organization only confirmed that Sandinista councilor Miriam Argüello Martínez was imposed on the position of mayor.
Dispossession in the communes of Yalí, El Cuá and El Almendro
Open Ballot Boxes reported that the dispossession in the mayor’s offices of San Sebastián de Yalí, El Cuá and El Almendro was also carried out by members of the Police and political operators of the Sandinista Front.
In Yalí, the report details, the seizure of the Mayor’s Office occurred at around 6:00 am when police surrounded the building, broke locks and doors and did not allow the entry of workers from the commune.
CONFIDENTIAL He tried to communicate with the mayor of San Sebastián de Yalí, Noel Moreno, but he indicated that at that time he could not give interviews because “the Police were taking over the Mayor’s Office.”
In the Mayor’s Office of El Cuá, the police siege began on July 2. Open Ballot Boxes reported that workers from that municipality denounced “threats of judicial processes related to corruption in the management of the municipality.”
The takeover of the community in El Cuá took place on the morning of this Monday, July 4, after the Police “surrounded the perimeter” and forced “workers to attend a meeting with the new authorities.”
“Information was received that there are two municipal workers delivering all the information to avoid further manifestations of violence,” said the citizen organization.
In addition, he mentioned that they had no information on the situation of the mayor, Isidro Irias, or the deputy mayor Oneyda Rodríguez Mairena.
CONFIDENTIAL He tried to talk to Mayor Irias but he did not answer any of the phone calls. Deputy Mayor Rodríguez only answered one of the communications indicating that she was unable to respond at that time.
In El Almendro, the dispossession occurred at around 5:00 am and was executed by a strong police contingent that arrived aboard six trucks, Deputy Mayor Lilliam Martínez said in an interview with CONFIDENTIAL.
He affirmed that, although he was not there during the takeover, workers informed him that the commune was surrounded and that the police allowed them to enter so that they “turned in everything” and that “several of them were asked for their letter of resignation.”
Open Urnas pointed out that the dispossession in El Almendro was led by Jhonny Francisco Gutiérrez Novoa, Sandinista mayor of San Carlos, in Río San Juan, by the senior commissioner Dennis Castro, head of the departmental delegation of Río San Juan, and political secretaries of the Front Sandinista.
He also indicated that the flag of the Sandinista Front was raised in all the municipalities taken over and that workers from some of those mayors denounced siege in their homes.
The citizen organization highlighted that these seizures are “illegal and incur in violations and constitutional, criminal and municipal illegalities”, among them: illegal, arbitrary administrative process and without procedural guarantees; and abuse of authority.
Impeachments and mayoral seizures
Open Ballot Boxes recalled that the persecution against opposition mayors dates back to 2018, when in the municipality of Mulukukú, in the North Caribbean, the opposition mayor Apolonio Fargas was arbitrarily arrested and imprisoned for ten months.
On October 27, 2020, the regime also ordered the forcible seizure of the Municipality of Wiwiíin Jinotega, after opening an administrative judicial process against Mayor Reyna Hernández, who is currently in exile.
On that occasion, the now former mayor Hernández denounced the participation of the Police and Inifom authorities in the takeover of the commune.
The removal of opposition officials elected at the polls has been a practice since the Ortega-Murillo regime returned to power. In 2016, 28 deputies from the Independent Liberal Party Alliance Bench (Bapli); 16 owners and 12 substitutes were removed from their positions after a request from Pedro Reyes Vallejos, who at that time became the new president and legal representative of that party.
The massive dispossession of that time was pointed out by legal experts as a breach of the “constitutional order and the democratic system in Nicaragua.” In addition, they highlighted that the CSE measure had “a clear political interest behind it to affect the opposition.”
