By Wendy Anders

Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega ousted 28 opposition lawmakers in July in advance of the country’s November elections, and the rocky road towards his probable reelection continues with no opposition candidates in the field.

The former Independent Liberal Party (PLI) legislators are expected to appeal to the OAS for support for their removal which occurred after the PLI leader, Eduardo Montealegre was removed and replaced, reported Spanish daily El Pais last month

In the meantime, speaking from Costa Rica, Zoilamérica Ortega Murillo, Nicaraguan first lady’s daughter and adoptive daughter of Ortega, is angry with Ortega’s recent announcement of his wife Rosario Murillo as his VP running-mate, according to an exchange she had recently with the Nicaraguan daily La Prensa Libre.

Zoilamérica sought refuge in Costa Rica after denouncing Daniel Ortega of raping and sexually abusing her as a child when she and her parents lived in political asylum in Costa Rica at the end of the Somoza regime.

About the current VP announcement, she said to Nicaragua’s La Prensa Libre, “I can not help but observe how the (vice-presidential) candidacy is an extension of the complicity surrounding the abuse which I lived, and which today is spread extensively throughout daily political life.”

Curiously, when Zoilamérica left Nicaragua with her parents due to political upheaval in 1978 she was 10 years old, and when she sought refuge for the second time in Costa Rica in 2013, she was accompanied by her 9 year old son; but this time seeking respite from a government headed by her mother and stepdad.

Zoilamérica in her new life in Costa Rica is a founding member of Fundación Casa Abierta, a foundation that supports Central America migrants fleeing sexual-related violence or persecution in their home countries.

President of the Nicaraguan Center for Human Rights, Vilma Núñez, said to La Prensa Libre regarding Ortega’s recent announcement, “ … never in Latin America has there been a situation in which a man in power who is exercising it in the most arbitrary and authoritarian way as he is doing, acts with yet more arbitrariness in a show of complete and total lack of confidence in the Sandinista Party … and only confides in the person with whom he sleeps each night … this is paranoia, it is fear.”

Born on November 11, 1945 in La Libertad, Nicaragua, Ortega was later a guerrilla leader aiming to overthrow dictator Anastasio Somoza. He was a member of the Sandinista ruling junta that took power in 1979, and was elected president from 1984 – 1990, when he lost to Violeta Barrios de Chamorro. In 2007 he regained the presidency, and was elected again in 2011. This is Ortega’s 4th presidential bid, and his third consecutive bid.

In January 2014, the Nicaraguan National Assembly approved changes to the constitution to allow President Daniel Ortega to run for a third successive term in 2016.