Candidate urges opposition to go to elections in Nicaragua and “prove fraud”

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – The opposition aspirant to the Presidency of Nicaragua, economist Juan Sebastián Chamorro, urged his country’s opposition to participate in the upcoming elections in which President Daniel Ortega, in power since 2007, seeks his third consecutive reelection. Through this active participation, the opposition would ultimately be able to prove fraud against Ortega.

“You have to go (to the elections) because if you don’t go, there is no day after the elections,” said Chamorro, nephew-in-law of former Nicaraguan President Violeta Barrios de Chamorro (1990-1997).

Chamorro, who is a presidential pre-candidate for the Citizens’ Alliance, explained that the opposition’s plan A is to go to the elections and win them, which, he considered, “is possible, it is desirable, and if we do what we have to do well, we can achieve it”.

“But if despite this avalanche of votes, (the Sandinista rulers) steal them, what comes next is a denunciation, is the creation of a parallel government, as precisely (the current Mexican president) Andrés Manuel López Obrador did when he said that an election had been stolen from him”, he said.

“DELEGITIMIZE THE DICTATORSHIP”

According to Chamorro, who was Vice Minister of Finance and Public Credit and Secretary of Coordination and Strategy in the Administration of Enrique Bolaños (2002-2007), if the opposition participates in the next elections, it will have “elements” to “show the fraud” and “delegitimize the dictatorship”.

“That is to say, if here (in Nicaragua) we are going to go all out, as they (the Sandinistas) say, we have to proceed to an international disavowal of the results of the elections because the process was vitiated before, during and after the voting day”, he noted.

In his opinion, the Sandinistas were “forging a fraud” for the next elections and argued his denunciation based on the reform to the Electoral Law promoted and approved by the government and the election of new electoral arbitrators, most of them related to President Ortega.

The Sandinista legislators and their allies, who have an absolute majority in the Parliament, approved two days ago some reforms to the Electoral Law which annul the electoral observation to give way to the limited role of “accompaniment”, inhibits candidates who applaud the international sanctions against Ortega and his close associates, limits electoral financing in their favor and restricts constitutional rights.

Additionally, they reelected 2 magistrates of the Supreme Electoral Council. They elected another 8, mostly Sandinistas, which guaranteed that the arbitration body of the elections would continue to be integrated by members of the ruling party and characters described as allies, according to the opponents.

RULES OUT ARMED STRUGGLE

For Chamorro, “the dictatorship is going all out to restrict the Nicaraguan electoral process”.

“Ortega will not make concessions to the opposition to ceding power”, said the politician, for whom “it is illusory to think of a democratic Ortega”.

Despite this reality, he continued, “we must go to the last consequences”, which, he clarified, does not include armed struggle.

Chamorro said that he expects an “avalanche of votes” on election day, and in this way, “fraud will be more complicated for the dictatorship”.

Likewise, he affirmed that “almost the totality of the international community”, with whose representatives he has spoken, have told him that the opposition must go to the elections, including Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaidó.

Chamorro is afraid that the ruling Sandinistas will pass laws in their favor, elect biased electoral officials to count the votes, and inhibit dissident candidates, among others, to make the opposition desist from participating in the elections.

“With the popular and massive vote, we can confront this blatant attempt of fraud”, he said.

The opponents are looking for a way to defeat the Sandinistas, led by Ortega, 75 years old, who on January 10 completed 14 consecutive years in his second stage as president of Nicaragua, after coordinating a Government Junta from 1979 to 1985 and presiding over the country for the first time from 1985 to 1990.

Source: efe