Police charge director of Miss Nicaragua pageant with running ‘beauty queen coup’ plot. Karen Celebertti has been accused of intentionally rigging contests so that anti-government beauty queens would win as part of a plot to overthrow the government. Nicaraguan police said Friday 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. It all started on Nov. 18, when Miss Nicaragua Sheynnis Palacios won the Miss Universe competition. The 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 tone quickly soured 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. 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.
