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MEXICO CITY (AP) — Nicaraguan police revealed on Friday that they intend to arrest the director of the Miss Nicaragua pageant. They have accused her of deliberately fixing contests to ensure that anti-government beauty queens would win the pageants. It is all part of an alleged plot to overthrow the government.
These charges could easily have come from a vintage James Bond movie, with an oppressive, secretive government, claims of plotting a coup, foreign operatives, and beauty queens.
It all began on November 18 when Miss Nicaragua, Sheynnis Palacios, won the Miss Universe competition. The government of President Daniel Ortega initially believed that this was a rare public relations victory. They referred to her win as a moment of “legitimate joy and pride.”
However, the mood quickly changed the next day when it was revealed that Palacios had posted photos on Facebook showing her involvement in one of the mass anti-government protests in 2018.
The protests were met with brutal repression, and human rights officials claim that 355 people were killed by government forces. Ortega alleged that the protests were an attempted coup with foreign backing, aimed at toppling him. His opponents argued that Nicaraguans were protesting against his increasingly oppressive rule and his seemingly never-ending desire to cling to power.
A statement from the National Police alleged that Celebertti “actively participated, both on the internet and in the streets, in the terrorist actions of a failed coup,” apparently referring to the 2018 protests.
Celebertti reportedly managed to evade the police after being denied entry into the country a few days earlier. However, some local media reported that her son and husband had been arrested.
Miss Nicaragua Sheynnis Palacios participates in the evening gown category during the 72nd Miss Universe Beauty Pageant in San Salvador, El Salvador, Saturday, Nov. 18, 2023. (AP Photo/Moises Castillo)
via Associated Press
Celebertti, her husband, and son are facing charges of “treason to the motherland.” They have not addressed the charges against them publicly.
According to the statement, Celebertti “remained in contact with the traitors, and offered to employ the franchises, platforms and spaces supposedly used to promote ‘innocent’ beauty pageants, in a conspiracy orchestrated to convert the contests into traps and political ambushes financed by foreign agents.”
The government was further enraged when many ordinary Nicaraguans, who are mostly prohibited from carrying out protests or displaying the national flag in marches, used the Miss Universe win as a rare opportunity to celebrate in the streets.
Their use of the blue-and-white national flag, opposed to Ortega’s red-and-black Sandinista flag, angered the government further. The authorities claimed that the plotters “would take to the streets again in December, repeating the worst chapter of vileness in history.”
Just five days after Palacios’ win, Vice President and First Lady Rosario Murillo was lashing out at opposition social media sites (many run from exile) that celebrated Palacios’ win as a victory for the opposition.