Spain rejects “fraudulent” elections: they were “a mockery”

Spain did not give credibility or legitimacy to the results of the presidential elections which it considers “fraudulent” and “a mockery”,  in which the Supreme Electoral Council (CSE) awarded Daniel Ortega almost 75 percent of the votes, in its first count on November 7th. 

According to a communiqué from the Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the elections do not reflect the genuine will of the Nicaraguan people, given that Ortega has deprived the people of the free and full right to exercise their suffrage and points out that, like the countries of the European Union and a good part of the international community, it agrees that the process has not had the minimum of democratic guarantees.

“The executive demands free, fair, transparent and well attended elections that guarantee the participation of all Nicaraguans”, reads the statement in which they have demanded the immediate release of all political prisoners and the annulment of the judicial process. 

They refer specifically to 150 prisoners of conscience, among them the last 39 imprisoned in the midst of the repressive escalation initiated at the end of May during the electoral context, with which the regime eliminated political competition. Among the victims of these latest arrests are seven aspiring presidential candidates, civic leaders, politicians and businessmen, most of whom the regime has accused of “treason”. 

Nicaragua lives under a “repressive regime” 

The Spanish executive branch has denounced the establishment of a repressive regime, protected by a repressive legal framework that has the complicity of the legislative and judicial branches, under Ortega's control, which explains the persecution of different sectors in the political, social, media and economic spheres.

They state that this has reached “the point of outlawing opposition parties, imprisoning their main leaders and aspiring candidates, all of them still in prison and deprived of their procedural rights, and the consequent denial of their right to participate in elections that are clearly fraudulent”. 

However, when Ortega first reacted to the international criticism of the elections, he defended Nicaragua's sovereignty in a speech on radio and television, in which he attacked the opposition and the leaders that his system keeps in jail.

Spain also condemned the closure of critical media and denounced the denial of entry to international correspondents, among them a team of Radio Televisión Española at the border with Costa Rica. It also called for the restoration and guarantee of the fundamental rights of all Nicaraguan citizens and an end to repression and harassment, while ratifying its commitment to the people with the donation of 1.7 million doses of vaccines against Covid-19 through the COVAX mechanism.

This article was originally published in Spanish in Confidencial and translated by our staff