{"id":7806,"date":"2022-07-04T01:15:48","date_gmt":"2022-07-04T05:15:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/?p=7806"},"modified":"2022-07-05T01:15:59","modified_gmt":"2022-07-05T05:15:59","slug":"nicaragua-government-takes-over-five-opposition-held-towns","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/?p=7806","title":{"rendered":"Nicaragua Government Takes Over Five Opposition-Held Towns"},"content":{"rendered":"
The Spanish word for “Murderer” covers a mural of Nicaragua’s President Daniel Ortega, as part of anti-government protests demanding his resignation in Managua, Nicaragua, May 26, 2018. Four months before scheduled 2022 municipal elections, Nicaraguan riot police have taken over the city halls of five municipalities that had been in the hands of an opposition party. (AP Photo\/Esteban Felix, File)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Four months before scheduled municipal elections, Nicaraguan riot police have taken over the city halls of five municipalities that had been in the hands of an opposition party.<\/p>\n

Kitty Monterrey, president of Citizens for Freedom, a political party disallowed by the Nicaraguan government before presidential elections last year, confirmed the police occupations in San Sebastian de Yali, El Cua, Murra and El Almendro.<\/p>\n

Oscar Gadea Tinoco, mayor of Pantasma and member of Citizens for Freedom, also said that police occupied his town Saturday.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll mayor\u2019s offices legitimately elected under the flag of Citizens for Freedom, have been taken by the regime,\u201d Monterrey said Monday via Twitter. She demanded that President Daniel Ortega respect the well-being of the officials and mayors who were removed from office.<\/p>\n

Citizens for Freedom had won each of those town halls in the 2017 elections. But headed into last year\u2019s presidential election, President Daniel Ortega showed little tolerance for the opposition. Authorities locked up seven leading opposition figures who could have challenged Ortega for the presidency.<\/p>\n

Instead, Ortega coasted to a fourth consecutive term in elections the United States and European Union dismissed as a farce and the opposition figures remain in detention.<\/p>\n

The Nicaraguan government had not commented on the takeovers.<\/p>\n

Noel Moreno, the deposed mayor of San Sebastian de Yali in northwest Nicaragua, said some 50 heavily armed riot police and members of Ortega\u2019s Sandinista National Liberation Front entered town offices early Monday.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe seat remains under control of riot police,\u201d said Moreno, adding that he was not there when the police arrived. He was not sure if town staff remained inside or had been moved.<\/p>\n

He said Sandinista town council members had \u201calready named themselves mayor and vice-mayor\u201d and raised the Sandinista flag. The takeovers appeared to have been similar in the other municipalities.<\/p>\n

In Pantasma, Gadea Tinoco said that Sandinista councilwoman Carmen Obando was named as his replacement. The argument was that Citizens for Freedom was no longer a recognized entity because Nicaraguan electoral authorities had canceled its status last year.<\/p>\n

After the party was canceled, Monterrey was also stripped of her Nicaraguan nationality and accused of being in the country illegally. She fled into exile in Costa Rica.<\/p>\n

Of Nicaragua\u2019s 153 municipalities, Ortega\u2019s Sandinista Front now controls 140. Two allied parties control the other 13.<\/p>\n

The opposition organization Open Ballot Boxes, a citizen election monitoring network, denounced \u201cthe absence of democratic conditions.\u201d They demanded that municipal workers\u2019 well-being be respected.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey don\u2019t want anyone to participate in these elections,\u201d Moreno said.<\/p>\n

In a statement, Monterrey called the takeovers \u201ca very serious attack against popular will and municipal autonomy.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWith these actions the regime is confirming that it has no interest in rehabilitating the electoral path or even trying to maintain an appearance of legality in the next municipal elections,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

– AP News<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Four months before scheduled municipal elections, Nicaraguan riot police have taken over the city halls of five municipalities that had been in the hands of an opposition party. Kitty Monterrey, president of Citizens for Freedom, a political party disallowed by the Nicaraguan government before presidential elections last year, confirmed the police occupations in San Sebastian…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":124,"featured_media":7808,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/storage.googleapis.com\/afs-prod\/media\/424d95114e9041fb9a172b8da0426e7a\/800.jpeg","fifu_image_alt":"Nicaragua Government Takes Over Five Opposition-Held Towns","footnotes":""},"categories":[192],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7806","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-polity-governance"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7806","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/124"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7806"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7806\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7807,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7806\/revisions\/7807"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7808"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7806"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7806"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7806"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}