Opponents denounce new arrests in Nicaragua before the vote

At least nine territorial opposition leaders were detained by the National Police before the vote of this sunday in Nicaragua, in which the president Daniel Ortega seeks a new re-election, the organizations Blue and White National Unity and the Civic Alliance for Justice and Democracy denounced this Sunday.

“We counted at least eight of our leaders kidnapped by the regime, in illegal raids, which only reinforces the state of siege in which the Ortega and Murillo regime has placed the opposition,” said the opposition leader. National Unit, Alexa Zamora, in an audio, in which she confirmed the arrests.

The Civic Alliance, which was the counterpart of the Executive in some negotiating tables with which a solution was sought to the crisis that the country has been experiencing since April 2018, denounced, for its part, the apprehension of a territorial leader, near the midnight on Saturday.

“In Nicaragua harassment, surveillance, threats, intimidation, harassment, attacks and arbitrary illegal detentions of our municipal and departmental leaders and territorial liaisons persist,” said the Alliance.

Among those detained are the territorial leaders Yaser Mahumar Vado and Nidia Barbosa, of the National Unity and the Civic Alliance, respectively.

The names of the rest of the detained leaders were not publicly identified at the request of their relatives, explained the National Unity, which confirmed that the wave of arrests of opponents that began last May continues.

Until last October 21, when the president of the Superior Council of Private Enterprise (Cosep), Michael Healy, and the vice president of the employer’s association, Álvaro Vargas, were arrested, 39 leaders and independent professionals were imprisoned within the framework of the elections. .

Among those arrested are seven aspiring candidates for the Presidency by the opposition, accused, among others, of crimes that are considered treason, and money laundering.

The Urnas Abiertas observatory, which monitors electoral violence in Nicaragua, recorded 1,656 violent events in the framework of the elections since October 2020, including 120 in the last month.

In these elections, Ortega, who coordinated a Governing Board from 1979 to 1985 and presided over the country for the first time from 1985 to 1990, and returned to power in 2007, seeks his third consecutive reelection for a fourth consecutive five-year term, and a second with his wife, Rosario Murillo, as vice president.

Both the opposition, the Organization of American States (OAS) and the European Union, have questioned the legitimacy of the elections in Nicaragua.

More than 4.4 million Nicaraguans are called to the polls to elect their president and vice president, 90 deputies before the National Assembly, and 20 before the Central American Parliament (Parlacen).