Nicaraguan Legislator Dies of Covid-19

Nicaraguan legislator Carlos Alberto Jiron Bolaños, 65, died Tuesday of health complications and was promptly buried, his family and the Liberal Constitutionalist Party (PLC), to which he belonged, reported.

Jiron, who suffered from diabetes, died at the Oscar Danilo Rosales Hospital in the city of Leon, where he was originally from. He is the third deputy of the National Assembly who dies in the last two months, but the first attributable to the coronavirus pandemic.

On April 2, the legislator Jacinto Suárez, 72, who was secretary of International Relations of the ruling Sandinista National Liberation Front (FLSN), died after spending more than two months hospitalized in Managua.

On May 4, Sandinista deputy Antonia Vílchez Salinas died of a myocardial infarction nine days after having undergone surgery, the Government reported at the time.

The National Assembly paid posthumous tributes to the two Sandinista deputies, however, in the case of the opposition legislator, he was quickly buried, the usual protocol for Covid-19 deaths.

In a statement, the PLC, to which Jiron Bolaños belonged, expressed its deep sadness at the death of its legislator, who had been a member of that group since 1993.

The deceased deputy was previously a City Councilman in the municipality of Leon for two periods, and municipal and departmental president of that department for the PLC.

In the National Assembly, he belonged to the Commission for Peace, Defense, Governance and Human Rights, and the Commission for the Environment and Natural Resources.