The Ortega regime did not allow the mayor of Granada, Julia Mena, to complete her second term as mayor of the municipality, after being elected in the municipal elections of 2017 for the period 2018-2022.
Mena withdrew from the mayor’s office, since mid-2019 and the only argument given by the Sandinista leaders within the Municipal Council is that he had withdrawn for “health reasons”, but he was never seen again in the corridors. of the commune.
After the retirement of Julia Mena, the commune was intervened by the Nicaraguan Institute for Municipal Development (Inifom) for alleged irregularities in the administration and the position was assumed by the deputy mayor, art teacher Pedro Vargas, who was appointed mayor in the newly named electoral farce of November 6, 2022, under the Sandinista party box.
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A political source reports that there are several hypotheses about the Sandinista party’s decision to order Mena to be removed from office. One of them is that he did not get a belligerent role in the repression of the protests of April 2018, when the colonial city joined the protests demanding justice and freedom; Other versions are that he had controversies with the Sandinista bases, who criticized him for his liberal roots.
“I do not believe that Mayor Julia Mena’s removal from office was due to health reasons, because in Granada we citizens observe her participating in the cathedral masses and in the church of Our Lady of Perpetual Help and even mobilizing through the streets to aboard the Land Cruiser Prado truck owned by the community,” says the source.
They also point out that they saw her participate in the mock municipal elections on November 6, attending her Voting Center located in the Pablo Antonio Cuadra College, however, the source emphasizes that she stays away from the political activities carried out by the Sandinista party. in the city of Granada.
Candidate of the United National Convergence Nicaragua Triumphs
Julia Mena has liberal roots, she was a deputy of the National Assembly for the Independent Liberal Party in the period of 1990-1996 and appointed vice president of the Republic of Nicaragua by that power of the State, when former vice president Virgilio Godoy resigned from his position, a year before the national elections of October 10, 1996, where Arnoldo Alemán and Enrique Bolaños Geyer were elected.
The deposed Julia Mena, in 2012, was part of the so-called national convergence of the Alianza Unida Nicaragua Triunfa, where Nelson Artola, former president of the National Emergency Fund (FISE), presented her in the event hall of the San Francisco Convent, as the official candidate of the Sandinista Front party of the city of Granada, as a strategy to seek the vote of the Democrats.
Mena managed to be at the head of the Granada commune for seven consecutive years under the administration of the Sandinista party, an organization that remained silent in his retirement and the magistrates of the Electoral Power never made his dismissal official, for which he officially continues to lead the commune, but without performing a single function.
Granada considered the cradle of conservatism
Since the municipal elections of 2012, the local government of Granada is administered by mayors of the Sandinista Front party, when Julia Mena assumed the administration.
In recent history, the last liberal-leaning mayor who was in charge of the Granada mayor’s office was Eulogio Mejía Marenco, who won the municipal elections of November 9, 2008, but in the end he joined the ranks of the Sandinista party, in the face of alleged threats of going to jail for acts of corruption.
In the so-called municipal voting drill on November 6, 2022, Mayor Pedro Vargas and Deputy Mayor Rosario Caldera were appointed as the formula of the Sandinista party, where more than 95% of the 35 council members were awarded by the Sandinista front and the so-called parties. “collaborators” like the PLC seek to reach three seats, the Independent Liberal Alliance one and the Alliance for the Republic (APRE) the same number.
According to a source, the mayor of this city earns an average salary of 120,000 cordobas, while a councilor earns 12,000 cordobas.
The colonial city traditionally has conservative roots, since the independence of Nicaragua in 1821. Historians point out that within the Somoza dictatorship, even the municipality was administered by mayors of the Green Party, as a result of the “understandings” that the leadership had with the Somozas. .
Like other municipalities in the country, the winner of the recent municipal votes in the colonial city was the abstentionism of the voters, which was historic, by excluding the opposition from the elections in a contest, where Sandinismo was the only organization campaigning politician.
