Nicaragua

The Trump administration has ended the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Nicaraguans, leaving more than 5,000 Nicaraguan immigrants in limbo. The status was extended for six months for Hondurans, although they remain under the threat of losing these protections. The decision was announced on Monday, an obligatory deadline since the TPS for these two countries is due to expire in 60 days, next January 5th.

The Supreme Electoral Council (CSE) has awarded 135 of the country’s 153 mayoralties to the Sandinista Front, after receiving 98.76% of the Voting tabulation sheets from Sunday’s municipal elections. The ruling party will control the 15 departmental capitals of the country, and the two main cities of the autonomous regions of the Caribbean, Bluefields and Bilwi for a total of 17.

After a lackluster campaign with virtually no legal opposition, the candidates of the FSLN party of the presidential couple Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo, swept to victory Sunday as expected throughout the country.

On Sunday November 5, Nicaragua holds nationwide local elections but only in 19 of the 153 municipalities in the country is there a resemblance of electoral competition between the Sandinista Front and other authorized parties. Likewise, the process has been plagued by irregularities.

Some 3.6 million people are eligible to vote Sunday in the municipal elections in Nicaragua, where the ruling Sandinista Front will seek to impose itself on seven weak rivals (some considered allies) and expand its power to nearly all of the 153 cities in the country.

Cenidh, the Nicaraguan Human Rights Center, assured that “conditions to guarantee that the citizenry of all the municipalities freely elect their mayors and city council members are non-existent.”

Four years after the project was originally announced, the “Russia-Nicaragua anti-narcotics training center” was inaugurated this week in the residential suburb of Managua known as Las Colinas, near Moscow’s embassy.

The historic events that marked Nicaragua in 1980, whose wounds never healed, fuses with the present and the family history of filmmaker Gloria Carrion in the documentary “Heiress of the Wind”, a cinematographic work that will screen worldwide at the International Documentary Festival of Amsterdam (IDFA) from November 15 to 27.

Nicaraguan rural leader Francisca “Chica” Ramirez criticizes Ortega’s government for abusing the human rights of those who oppose them. Ramirez was invited by the Front Line Defenders foundation to take part in a discussion alongside another hundred human rights defenders. The event took place in Dublin, Ireland, starting on October 17th and came to an end on the 19th this month.