Nicaraguan police announced Friday that they want to arrest the director of the Miss Nicaragua pageant on suspicion of intentionally rigging the pageant so that anti-government beauty queens could win it as part of a plot to overthrow the government. .
The accusations against pageant director Karen Celebrity would not be out of place in a classic James Bond movie, with its repressive and closed governments, allegations of coup plots, foreign agents and beauty queens.
It all started on November 18th, when Miss Nicaragua Shenis Palacios won the Miss Universe pageant.
President Daniel Ortega’s government briefly considered it a rare public relations victory, calling her victory a moment of “justified joy and pride.”
But the mood quickly soured when it was revealed the day after the victory that Palacios had posted a photo of himself on Facebook taking part in one of the largest anti-government protests in 2018.
The protests were violently suppressed, and human rights authorities said 355 people were killed by government forces.
Ortega claimed the protests were an attempted coup aimed at overthrowing him with foreign support. His opponents said Nicaraguans were protesting his increasingly repressive rule and unending urge to hold on to power.
A statement from the National Police alleges that Sereverti “actively participated in the terrorist acts of the coup attempt on the internet and in the streets,” an apparent reference to the 2018 protests.
The celebrity appears to have slipped through the hands of police after reportedly being refused entry permission a few days ago.
However, some local media reported that her son and husband were detained.
The celebrity, her husband and son have been charged with “treason against the motherland.” They have not spoken publicly about the charges against them.
Cerevertti “continued to communicate with traitors and to use franchises, platforms and spaces allegedly used to promote ‘innocent’ beauty pageants to turn contests funded by foreign agents into entrapments and political ambushes.” “Offered to be used as part of a plot orchestrated to change the situation,” the newspaper reported. That statement.
It didn’t help that many ordinary Nicaraguans, who are largely banned from displaying the national flag at protests and marches, used the Miss Universe victory as a rare opportunity to celebrate in the streets.
Their use of a blue-and-white national flag, in contrast to Mr. Ortega’s red-and-black Sandinista flag, further angered the government, and the conspirators “took to the streets again in December, committing the worst attack in history.” “I will repeat the chapter.” Of baseness. ”
Just five days after Palacio’s victory, Vice President and First Lady Rosario Murillo was slamming opposition social media sites, many of them defectors, for celebrating Palacio’s victory as a victory for the opposition.
“Today, in the wake of new victories, we witness a clumsy and insulting attempt by evil terrorist commentators to turn a beautiful and well-deserved moment of pride into an incitement to a destructive coup. Murillo said.
ortega government They occupied and closed down the Central American Jesuit University in Nicaragua. It, along with at least 26 other Nicaraguan universities, was the epicenter of protests against Ortega’s government in 2018.
The government also outlawed or closed more than 3,000 civil society and nongovernmental organizations, arrested and expelled opponents, revoked citizenship, and confiscated assets.
Thousands of people have fled into exile.
Palacios, the first Nicaraguan to win Miss Universe, has not commented on the situation.
During the competition, Palacios, 23, said she wanted to work on promoting mental health after suffering debilitating bouts of anxiety herself. She also wants to work to close the gender pay gap, she said.
But Palacios posted a photo of himself participating in the protest on a Facebook account in his now-deleted name, writing that he was initially afraid to participate. “I didn’t know if I should go or not. I was worried about what would happen.”
Some who attended that day’s march remember seeing the tall, imposing Palacios there.
