Opponents released from prison branded as “farce” November elections in Nicaragua

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – The so-called Grupo de Reflexión Excarcelados Políticos (Grex), made up mostly of opponents who were kept in prison in the context of the socio-political crisis that Nicaragua has been experiencing since April 2018, on Thursday branded as a “farce” the general elections of next November 7, in which the country’s president, Daniel Ortega, seeks new re-election.

“The Group does not support the electoral farce, we will not participate in any activity that suggests any degree of legitimacy to this regime that has persecuted us, has violated our rights, and that in 2019, on May 16, gave the order to assassinate our martyr Eddy Montes Praslín,” said the Grex, in a public statement.

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The Grex, whose majority of members participated in the protests that broke out against the Ortega government 40 months ago, also stated that they would not support “any candidate of any party in contention, in the current electoral conditions”.

“In this flawed process, in which the dictatorship has all the dice loaded in its favor, they once again resort to a series of satellite parties, opportunistic acronyms and agents of the dictatorship, ‘zancudos’ (collaborationists) who try to sell the idea that in Nicaragua there is political pluralism”, the Grex pointed out.

Other non-governmental organizations and opposition movements have issued similar announcements.

In the framework of the electoral process, the authorities have established restrictive laws, eliminated two political parties, and unleashed a wave of arrests that have led to the imprisonment of more than 30 opposition leaders and independent professionals, including seven presidential aspirants for the opposition.

In the general elections, Ortega seeks his third consecutive re-election for a fourth five-year term and second with his wife, Rosario Murillo, as vice-president.

Ortega, already governed between 1979 and 1990, will gamble 42 years of almost absolute domination of Nicaraguan politics.