The Electoral Tribunal linked to Daniel Ortega withdrew a major opposition bloc from the presidential election

Nicaraguan Electoral Tribunal, controlled by members linked to Daniel Ortega’s regime, excluded from the November presidential elections a major opposition bloc, led by the Democratic Restoration Party (PRD), informed the group leader.

The Supreme Electoral Council (CSE) “has decided to cancel the legal status of the PRD,” group chairman Saturnino Cerrato told reporters after receiving the notification. Without legal status, the party cannot stand for election and those who have allied with them also quit the race.

The PRD sought to represent a sector of the opposition united within the National Coalition (CN), made up of Sandinista dissent and several movements that played a key role in the 2018 protests, in which they demanded the resignation of socialist Ortega., in power since 2007.

According to Cerrato, the CSE said it made the decision after a protest filed Monday by a group of pastors against the PRD, an evangelical party.

The PRD leader explained that some evangelical “alleged pastors” accused him of joining opposition sectors that support issues such as abortion and respect for sexual minorities., which they consider “incompatible” with their Christian values.

The plaintiffs did not have the power to request the suspension of the party because they are not part of it, Cerrato said.

The resolutions of the CSE are “final”, he explained, and the bloc was excluded from the legislative and presidential elections of November 7.

“It is a completely delegitimized electoral process with the inhibition of the main political force of the opposition, whose members played a relevant and decisive role in the demonstrations.”In 2018, protested one of the members of this alliance, the Unión Democrática Renovadora (Unamos), made up of dissidents from the ruling Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN).

With the exit of the PRD, the opposition will only have to compete with the Ciudadanos por la Libertad (CXL) alliance, made up of an indigenous party and right-wing sectors.

Sandinism, for its part, will participate with the alliance “Unida Nicaragua Triunfa”, which does not exclude the appointment of Ortega, 75, for a fourth successive term.

His government has been sanctioned by the United States, which accuses it of corruption and human rights violations during opposition protests.

For the executive of Ortega, the 2018 protests were a failed US-sponsored coup.

Candidates should be defined in July.

For the Unamos opposition, the government “marked this electoral process with multiple traps and threats”.

With information from AFP

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