Nicaragua cancels passport of representative of illegalized opposition party

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – The Government of Nicaragua, through the Ministry of the Interior, informed this Sunday that it annulled the passport of Carmella María Rogers Amburn, known locally as Kitty Monterrey, legal representative of the opposition Citizens for Liberty (CxL), a political party that was outlawed by the Electoral Power given the November elections.

In a statement, the Ministry of the Interior explained that it withdrew the ordinary passport of the 71-year-old political leader, also a US citizen, because out of 198 registered trips, “a minority of them were made with a Nicaraguan passport”.

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According to a report of the Directorate of Migration and Alien Affairs, attached to the Ministry of the Interior, “refers that according to the 198 migratory movements registered, the majority of Mrs. Rogers Amburn used U.S. passports (in the minority she did so with a Nicaraguan passport)”, without specifying.

Therefore, the Government decided to annul the Nicaraguan passport of Rogers Amburn because, in addition, she obtained “the same in a fraudulent manner”, it said.

According to that portfolio, the fraudulent way began with his registration as a Nicaraguan on June 7, 2005, which he made at the Nicaraguan Consulate in San Francisco, California, United States.

According to the act of 16 years ago, the political leader was registered “unduly” with the name of Carmella Marie Kitty Monterrey, which does not coincide with her real name: Carmella María Rogers Amburn.

WITHOUT NICARAGUAN NATIONALITY AND A PARTY

Therefore, the political leader “is only a U.S. citizen,” the note added from now on.

Rogers Amburn or Monterrey is the legal representative of CxL, a party that defines itself as center-right, and which the Supreme Electoral Council (CSE) decided last Friday to cancel its legal personality, three months before the elections, in which the country’s president, Daniel Ortega, is seeking new reelection.

The CSE resolved on Friday to remove CxL, which headed an electoral alliance together with an indigenous party and a civic organization, from the electoral game and cancel its legal representative’s citizen identification card.

Through a resolution, the electoral magistrates, supporters of President Ortega, decided to dissolve the CxL party, among other reasons, for having registered as candidates for popularly elected positions people considered as “traitors of the homeland”, which is how the Government labels those who demonstrated against it in April 2018.

Nicaraguan authorities have arrested more than thirty opposition leaders in the current electoral process, including seven presidential aspirants.

The Electoral Council has also canceled the legal personality of three political parties. The Parliament, where the ruling party has an absolute majority, reformed the Electoral Law, which established greater control in the electoral structure in favor of the Sandinistas.

In the November elections, President Ortega, a former guerrilla fighter approaching his 76th birthday and in power since 2007, is seeking his fifth five-year term, fourth in a row and second with his wife, Vice President Rosario Murillo.