Opponents of the leftist government of Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega said on Wednesday they had enough votes in Congress to annul the disputed municipal elections on Nov. 9.
The Supreme Electoral Council (CSE) announced on Wednesday last week that the Sandinistas won 91 of the country’s 146 municipalities, including the capital — a result the opposition refused to accept.
The opposition has “incontrovertible proof of clumsy, shameless and massive fraud” carried out by the Electoral Council in coordination with the Sandinistas, said former Nicaraguan president Arnoldo Aleman, who heads the right-wing Liberal Party.
“We are exhausting all administrative and legal paths that the law allows ... And we are ready to declare the municipal election null and void,” Aleman said.
Pro-government Supreme Court Justice Rafael Solis dismissed the idea on Tuesday, saying that Congress had no authority to annul an election.
Aleman, Nicaraguan president between 1997 and 2002, did prison time after leaving office for corruption and embezzling government funds.
The biggest prize in the vote was the mayoralty of Managua, disputed between opposition leader Eduardo Montealegre — who narrowly lost to Ortega in the 2006 presidential vote — and former boxing star Alexis Arguello for the Sandinistas.
The Electoral Council said that Arguello won the race, but would nevertheless carry out a full vote recount.
The Electoral Council issued a statement on Wednesday blaming the news media for seeking to “torpedo” the vote results.
The media was carrying out a plot “that has been planned for months with support from the government of the United States” and the conservative opposition, CSE Spokesman Felix Navarrete said in a written statement.
“I can say without fear of making a mistake ... that the news media replaced the Electoral Council” by spreading misinformation, calling for civil disobedience and ignoring the outcome at the ballot box, he said.
At least five journalists have been wounded in the past days amid pro-government and anti-government clashes.
Meanwhile, five pro-opposition radio stations were either attacked or prevented from broadcasting, a number of local newspapers reported.
Workers at one of the radio stations said more than 40 hooded men that were armed with rifles arrived aboard several trucks, pushed around station employees, destroyed the broadcast equipment and then took office documents when they left.
“This is the fifth time that the [Sandinistas] destroyed our radio station,” Radio Dario owner Juan Toruno said.
THE ‘MONSTER’: The Philippines on Saturday sent a vessel to confront a 12,000-tonne Chinese ship that had entered its exclusive economic zone The Philippines yesterday said it deployed a coast guard ship to challenge Chinese patrol boats attempting to “alter the existing status quo” of the disputed South China Sea. Philippine Coast Guard spokesman Commodore Jay Tarriela said Chinese patrol ships had this year come as close as 60 nautical miles (111km) west of the main Philippine island of Luzon. “Their goal is to normalize such deployments, and if these actions go unnoticed and unchallenged, it will enable them to alter the existing status quo,” he said in a statement. He later told reporters that Manila had deployed a coast guard ship to the area
HOLLYWOOD IN TURMOIL: Mandy Moore, Paris Hilton and Cary Elwes lost properties to the flames, while awards events planned for this week have been delayed Fires burning in and around Los Angeles have claimed the homes of numerous celebrities, including Billy Crystal, Mandy Moore and Paris Hilton, and led to sweeping disruptions of entertainment events, while at least five people have died. Three awards ceremonies planned for this weekend have been postponed. Next week’s Oscar nominations have been delayed, while tens of thousands of city residents had been displaced and were awaiting word on whether their homes survived the flames — some of them the city’s most famous denizens. More than 1,900 structures had been destroyed and the number was expected to increase. More than 130,000 people
A group of Uyghur men who were detained in Thailand more than one decade ago said that the Thai government is preparing to deport them to China, alarming activists and family members who say the men are at risk of abuse and torture if they are sent back. Forty-three Uyghur men held in Bangkok made a public appeal to halt what they called an imminent threat of deportation. “We could be imprisoned and we might even lose our lives,” the letter said. “We urgently appeal to all international organizations and countries concerned with human rights to intervene immediately to save us from
RISING TENSIONS: The nations’ three leaders discussed China’s ‘dangerous and unlawful behavior in the South China Sea,’ and agreed on the importance of continued coordination Japan, the Philippines and the US vowed to further deepen cooperation under a trilateral arrangement in the face of rising tensions in Asia’s waters, the three nations said following a call among their leaders. Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr and outgoing US President Joe Biden met via videoconference on Monday morning. Marcos’ communications office said the leaders “agreed to enhance and deepen economic, maritime and technology cooperation.” The call followed a first-of-its-kind summit meeting of Marcos, Biden and then-Japanese prime minister Fumio Kishida in Washington in April last year that led to a vow to uphold international
RSS