Elections in Nicaragua: the presidential candidate of the Liberal Party resigns

Nicaraguan businessman Milton Arcia resigned on Saturday from his presidential candidacy for the opposition Liberal Constitutionalist Party (PLC) for the November 7 elections. after that group demanded to remove the Citizens for Freedom Alliance (CxL), the main opposition group, from the race.

Arcia, a tourist businessman, told reporters that PLC authorities had not received his irrevocable resignation letter, however. They have already appointed and registered before the Electoral Authority his replacement, the Deputy Walter Espinoza.

“What is unfortunate is that before resigning, they had already dismissed us” as a presidential candidate, he said.

Arcia said that the national president and legal representative of the CLP, MP María Haydée Osuna, had withdrawn her candidacy before the electoral authorities and registered that of Espinoza, “as if the party were her property”, without the authorization of the directive of this group. .

The tourism entrepreneur had announced the day before that he would resign his candidacy for the presidency of Nicaragua after the PLC asked the Supreme Electoral Council (SSC) to remove the CxL Alliance from the electoral process for alleged violation of the electoral law and other laws, as it actually happened.

The PLC, founded by former President Arnoldo Alemán (1997-2002), the second political force of the National Assembly (Parliament) and which various sectors of the opposition report as collaborating with the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN), in power, appointed his presidential candidate for Espinoza, who was Osuna’s driver.

The CSE decided on Friday to withdraw the CxL Alliance from the electoral process, three months before the elections, paving the way for the country’s president, Sandinista Daniel Ortega, who is seeking another re-election.

By a resolution, the electoral magistrates, supporters of President Ortega, They decided to annul the legal personality of the CxL party, which led an electoral alliance with an indigenous party and a civic organization, among other reasons for having registered as candidates for positions elected by universal suffrage considered to be “traitors to”. the homeland “.

In the current electoral process Nicaraguan authorities arrested more than 30 opposition leaders, including seven presidential candidates.

The Electoral Council also annulled the legal personality of three political parties, and the Parliament, where the ruling party has an absolute majority, reformed the electoral law, which established greater control over the electoral structure in favor of the Sandinistas.

President Ortega, a former guerrilla fighter on the verge of turning 76, is running for his fifth five-year term, the fourth in a row and the second with his wife, Vice-President Rosario Murillo, in the election of November.

With information from the EFE

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