Beauty queens overthrowing governments? It’s an unimaginable scenario, but exactly what is being reported by the Nicaraguan police.
On Friday they said they want to arrest the director of the Miss Nicaragua pageant, accusing her of intentionally rigging contests so that anti-government beauty queens would win the pageants as part of a plot to overthrow the government.
The charges against pageant director Karen Celebertti sound fantastical, more fiction than reality.
It all started Nov. 18, when Miss Nicaragua, Nicaragua’s Sheynnis Palacios won the Miss Universe competition. The increasingly isolated and repressive government of President Daniel Ortega briefly thought it had scored a rare public relations victory, calling her win a moment of “legitimate joy and pride.”
But the plot thickened the day after the win when it emerged that Palacios had posted photos of herself on Facebook participating in one of the mass anti-government protests in 2018 and the win quickly turned to angry condemnation.
Ordinary Nicaraguans took advantage of the Miss Universe win as a rare opportunity to celebrate in the streets.
Their use of the blue-and-white national flag, as opposed to Ortega’s red-and-black Sandinista banner, angered the government, and human rights officials say 355 people were killed by government forces. Ortega claimed the protests were an attempted coup with foreign backing, aiming for his overthrow. Ortega’s opponents said Nicaraguans were protesting his increasingly repressive rule and seemingly endless urge to hold on to power.
A statement by the National Police claimed Celebertti “participated actively, on the internet and in the streets in the terrorist actions of a failed coup,” an apparent reference to the 2018 protests.
The fate of Celebertti is not clear. According to some reports, apparently she slipped through the hands of police after she was reportedly denied permission to enter the country a few days ago. But some local media reported that her son and husband had been taken into custody.
Celebertti, her husband and son face serious charges of “treason to the motherland.” They have not spoken publicly about the charges against them.
