The Supreme Electoral Council (CSE) of Nicaragua on Friday, August 6, disqualified the Citizens for Freedom party (CxL, right), the main opposition party to President Daniel Ortega, for the November 7 elections.
“The legal personality of the political party Citizens for Freedom (CxL) [a été] canceled “, according to a resolution of the CSE read by the secretary of the electoral tribunal Luis Luna in front of the press linked to the government.
President Ortega, who is running for a fourth consecutive term, and his wife (and vice-president) Rosario Murillo now have no serious candidate against them for the November 7 election.
A denunciation of the PLC
The elimination of the CxL from the electoral race comes a few hours after a request in this direction from the Liberal Constitutionalist Party (PLC, right), accused of appeasing the government.
The PLC argued that the CxL party has “As president the citizen Carmella Rogers Amburn, who has dual nationality [américaine et nicaraguayenne] in clear violation of the law “. As a result, according to the PLC, the CSE had to “Declare the nullity of all acts of the CxL party”.
At the end of July, the CxL had appointed Oscar Sobalvarro, a 68-year-old former counter-revolutionary, and Berenice Quezada, a former beauty queen with no political experience, as candidates for the presidency and vice-presidency respectively. But he had been deprived this week of his candidate for vice-president. The latter’s house was surrounded on Tuesday by police after a group of supporters of President Ortega’s government accused her of launching a “Implicit call to violence, to hatred”.
Other political parties disqualified
According to the electoral calendar, the Supreme Electoral Council has until August 9 to validate the candidatures for the presidential election. But, even before its elimination, the CxL had all the difficulties in the world to convince another candidate to apply for the vice-president.
Two other opposition political parties have previously been disqualified in recent months by the CSE: the Conservative Party and the Party for Democratic Restoration.
A total of 31 opponents, including seven pre-presidential candidates, have been arrested since the beginning of June on charges of money laundering or treason, under legislation adopted at the end of 2020 whose political implications make it possible to reduce the opposition to silence sparked an international outcry.