According to the police, another presidential candidate was arrested in Nicaragua on Saturday (July 24)-this is the seventh potential candidate detained by Daniel Ortega’s government before the November 7 election.
Noel Vidaurre was placed under house arrest and charged with “undermining national sovereignty”. This is the latest in a series of arrests condemned by the United States and the European Union.
Ortega, the longtime leader of Nicaragua, will seek a fourth consecutive presidential term in the election.
The Speaker of the Nicaraguan Parliament, Gustavo Porras, confirmed last week that Ortega, now 75, will become the presidential candidate of the ruling Sandino National Liberation Front.
Of the 28 people detained by the Ortega government, 7 were opposition presidential candidates.
In the crackdown that began on June 2, the Ortega government rounded up political opponents in a series of house raids and night arrests on the grounds of threatening Nicaragua’s “sovereignty”.
These allegations are rooted in a law initiated by Ortega and approved by legislators in December, which has been widely criticized as a means to freeze challengers and suppress opponents before elections.
The law prohibits “those who demand, celebrate and praise the sanctions imposed on the Nicaraguan country” from seeking public office.
The 66-year-old Vidaurre is one of the potential candidates for the Alianza Ciudadanos por la Libertad group against Ortega.
Presidential candidates can register between July 28 and August 2.
Ortega said that those rounded up by his troops were “criminals” seeking to overthrow him with the support of the United States.
However, the crackdown drew international condemnation and new sanctions, and the United States referred to this long-time leader as a “dictator.”
The European Union has stated that the November elections “will be anything close to democratic competition”, which is “unbelievable”.
Ortega and his Sandinistas were provocative Marxists when they were young. They overthrew the corrupt authoritarian regime to the applause of the people, and seized it in 1979. Control of the country.
He was elected president in 1984 and governed until 1990, when he was defeated by Violeta Barrios de Chamorro and then returned to power in 2007. He won two consecutive terms for re-election.
The daughter of former President Chamorro, Cristiana Chamorro, is widely regarded as a popular candidate to defeat Ortega this year. She was the first to be targeted and is now under house arrest due to government charges of money laundering.
According to human rights agencies, Ortega has been accused of intensifying authoritarianism, especially after the brutal suppression of anti-government demonstrations in 2018, which caused more than 300 deaths and thousands of exiles.
Since 2017, his vice president has been his wife Rosario Murillo.
