The government has announced investigations, and then abducted and jailed, nearly every person in the opposition who has announced their candidacy for the presidency in November 2021. Prior to that, the Ortega regime has frequently used the tactic of revoking the legal status of opposition parties, thus controlling their electoral competitors. In this electoral cycle that has left only the Citizens for Liberty (CxL) party with legal status. The first candidate abducted were those who had registered for the primary process of the CxL. This week the CxL party officially abandoned their process for choosing their candidates, along with those who had pre-registered and were now abducted, and announced their handpicked candidates, Oscar Sobalvarro, vice president of CxL, former contra leader and cattle rancher, and Berenice Quezada, Miss Nicaragua in 2017. This article by the lawyer who accompanied the Peasant Movement against the Canal analyzes that decision in the context of the repression and upcoming elections.
April was not started by parties, nor will it die in their hands
By Mónica López Baltodano in Confidencial, July 29, 2021
The CxL Alliance did a “political favor” for the dictatorship by inhibiting early those running to be candidates and then ignoring the process and handpicking their candidate.
The dictatorship abducted those running to become the candidate, and the CxL Alliance de facto inhibited them by not having the courage to register them in their list of presidential and legislative candidates.
Now the Ortega and Murillo regime will not even have to officially inhibit from the electoral farse the people they have unjustly abducted.
The CxL Alliance did them the tremendous “political favor” of inhibiting them early and handpicking their candidate.
It seems that this alliance did not even assess the possibility of challenging the dictatorship over the innocence and freedom of the political prisoners – including the people who it is assumed were their own allies and even their friends.
How? The so-called Citizen Alliance could have named a presidential formula and a list of deputies composed of the names of all the electoral hostages, because none of them have even a final ruling against them. This would have forced the dictatorship to formalize their inhibition, getting the hands of the Supreme Electoral Council dirty- one more dirty trick.
On the other hand, they also could have united thousands of voices who are denouncing the ongoing fraud, who are demanding the unrestricted freedom of all the political prisoners, who denounce the total absence of conditions for elections, the brutal repression and the absolute lack of respect for the popular will- because November will not be elections but a mere circus for the prolongation of the dictatorial regime.
But well, for some time now we have known that the ongoing obstruction and irreparable damages that they [CxL] have done to the unity of the opposition have gone in one direction: the protection of their ballot position and the personal and corporate interests that bind them and subjected them to the dictatorship.
Once again the historical authoritarian formula was imposed of handpicked candidates, sectarianism and exclusion, which have spawned the dictatorships which for decades have stifled us. It has made manifest again the existing corruption in all the political parties, which resulted in the repudiation of more than 70% of this country for some years now, a fact which all the surveys confirm. The shameless traditions of “vote of confidence” or “viable option”, required in sacrifice to the unity of the democratic opposition, have cost the continuation of the storm on an entire country which no longer withstands living under this suffocating authoritarianism.
Undoubtably, now all the pieces of the fraud are assembled, including the token and collaborationist parties.
And the repression will continue galloping forward in a generalized way against all the voices in rebellion in Nicaragua, while the people continue organizing to once again win their freedom. The cry of “only the people will save the people” is not just a slogan, it is a challenge to the rottenness of the de facto powers who are blocking that conquest.
April did not start with the parties, nor will it die in their hands.
*Lawyer, environmentalist and member of the Articulation of Social Movements