Daniel Ortega insists that voting is Nicaragua’s way

The leader of the ruling Sandinista National Liberation Front compared the practice of democracy at the polls to violence and hate crimes as part of the failed coup attempt between April and July.

In his call for peace, Ortega pleaded with a passage from his country’s national anthem that read: “Your glorious two-colored banner is not stained with the blood of brothers.”

The president demanded that the blue and white flag not be stained with blood again, as happened during the terrorist escalation in 2018.

“We bury war, we salute peace,” the president summed up in reference to Election Day Sunday.

He noted that with the current elections, there are 49 occasions on which Nicaraguans went to the polls after the victory of the Sandinista People’s Revolution on July 19, 1979.

He expected their number to reach fifty at the end of next year, when local elections are held in 153 municipalities in the country.

Addressing the external pressures falling on Nicaragua’s elections from the major centers of Western power, Ortega recalled how the United States government itself had to contend in situations of terrorism at the hands of the law.

“Americans have the same right to conduct operations against terrorists, as we did,” the president said, referring to the January 6, 2021, attack by conservatives and white supremacists on the Washington Capitol and more than 30 politicians, businessmen, and women. Contacts imprisoned in Nicaragua for violations of national sovereignty and alleged money laundering crimes.

They were plotting to prevent these elections from taking place, the head of state warned, of persons subject to a judicial process, some of whom are part of a media matrix presenting them as imprisoned (presidential) candidates.

Indeed, at the time of their arrest, the electoral calendar had not yet reached the nomination stage and these politicians had only expressed their intention to run for office, but none of them had a political party to support their goal.

m/fgn