Managua, Nicaragua
Nicaraguan human rights activists and opponents considered this Friday “like a fairy tale“I”a bad taste joke“The new law that disqualifies the candidacies for popularly elected officials to those who applaud the imposition of sanctions against the state and its citizens, who will also be considered” traitors to the homeland. “
It seems like a rule “out of a fairy tale,” Nicaraguan human rights activist Joan Carles Arce told Efe.
For Arce, of the collective human rights NGO Nicaragua Mai Més, the “Law for the Defense of the People’s Rights to Independence, Sovereignty and Self-Determination for Peace” is a rule “that could well appear” in the fantasy novel “Alice in Wonderland“, A work by Lewis Carroll, pseudonym of the British mathematician and writer Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, published in 1865.
With the inhibition of candidacies to applaud sanctions, the President of Nicaragua, Daniel Ortega, “highlights the totally arbitrary vocation of his Government,” the activist considered.
During an extraordinary session, the majority Sandinista which controls the National Assembly (Parliament) on Monday urgently approved a law that will inhibit the candidacies of those Nicaraguans who, among other things, applaud the imposition of sanctions against the state and its citizens.
The United States, Canada, the European Union, and the United Kingdom have separately sanctioned some twenty people close to Ortega in the context of the socio-political crisis that Nicaragua has been experiencing since April 2018, which has left hundreds dead. and tens of thousands in exile.
FSLN called for sanctions to overthrow Somoza
“It’s a bad taste joke,” said opposition leader Felix Maradiaga, who called it ridiculous to ban those who applaud sanctions from running for office.
“And the weighty ones (fools) are made, wanting to ignore that when the Sandinista Front (National Liberation, FSLN) and its allies wanted to overthrow (Anastasio) Somoza (Debayle, in 1979), they traveled the world demanding sanctions , because they know perfectly well that sanctions are a method of non-violent struggle, “he recalled.
“It’s one more example of the hypocrisy that characterizes them” to the Sandinistas, Maradiaga added.
MORE: US supports OAS condemnation of new Nicaraguan election law.
For activist Arce, “it is clear that the dictatorship has already decided to take to the level of state policy the premise” of the dead “commander of the revolution” Tomás Borge, who told the Sandinista militants “that they will remain in the power at the expense of whatever. “
“Anything can happen, unless the Sandinista Front hands over power,” he ruled in his lifetime.
“The law of inhibitions is really another overthrow of dictator Daniel Ortega,” said, for his part, the opposition leader and businessman Juan Sebastián Chamorro, for whom this rule “is clearly directed against the opposition.”
Sandinistas argue that this law is based on Article 1 of the Constitution, which refers to the fact that “independence, sovereignty and national self-determination are inalienable rights of the people and foundations of the Nicaraguan nation.”
Opponents are looking to defeat the Sandinistas, led by Ortega, 75, who in January will turn 14 consecutive years in his second term as president of Nicaragua, after coordinating a governing board from 1979 to 1985, and presiding for the first time. once the country from 1985 to 1990.
Nicaragua is scheduled to hold general elections on November 7, 2021.