Features

Both women shared the same university halls, they both took to the streets ever since the first day of protests in Managua in April; by a quirk of fate, they are both now working in the struggle for university independence, justice, human rights and real democracy in Nicaragua.

The Austrian-US documentary filmmaker, Carl David Goette-Luciak, was taken from his home on Monday morning in the Colonia Centroamerica neighborhood of Managua. They put him in a patrol car, threatened him with torture and took him to the Augusto C. Sandino International Airport, where he was interrogated and later deported on flight TA397 to El Salvador.

Although Nicaragua’s Central Bank has not yet publicly acknowledged it, the country will fall formally in recession as of today, October first, when two consecutive quarters are completed without the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) showing signs of growth.

The day before Amaya Coppens Zamora was taken prisoner by Daniel Ortega’s dictatorship, in Leon, her father Federic Coppens spoke to her from Belgium. He tried to convince her that “things were becoming tense” and that she should look into leaving the country. She got annoyed and hung up the phone.

“The program is going to be the same, we will try to go more in-depth and retake some things that we had left behind. The jokes are going to be there and the political viewpoint will remain as long as this struggle continues. That I can assure,” stated Edgar Tijerino, the founder of the Double Play program.

The leader of the anti-canal peasant movement, Francisca Ramirez, promises to fight from abroad against the regime of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo. She said it from San Jose, Costa Rica, where she had to seek refuge, faced with a fierce government persecution.

A survey made by the Costa Rica based polling firm CID Gallup between September 6 and 18, the results of which were presented on the Esta Noche news program, showed that the percentage of Nicaraguans demanding the ouster of president Daniel Ortega and vice president Rosario Murillo increased from 57% in May to 61% in September.

One of the central questions of the debate was: How are we going to reach a democratic Nicaragua? For economist and business specialist Salvador Amador, when the possibility of elections approaches, “the first thing that must be guaranteed is the strengthening of the institutional framework, the reconstruction of the rule of law and returning to people their right to choose.”