Daniel Ortega’s Plan to Remain in Power

OOn November 7^th, Daniel Ortega will seek reelection to the presidency of Nicaragua for a fourth consecutive term; in the last months and to get his way, he has resorted to legal ruses to remove his opponents from the electoral race. These include arrests and trials of 34 political leaders, members of social organizations and journalists. This is a reflection of how the leader of the FSLN (Sandinista National Liberation Front, for its Spanish acronym), who has ruled the country since 2007, removed seven presidential candidates from the electoral race, including Cristiana Chamorro and Felix Madariaga, to consolidate an autocracy with a firm hand alongside his wife, Vice President Rosario Murillo.

Persecution of opponents is the latest in a series of strategies that have enabled Ortega to grab control of the entire State apparatus and, not mistakenly, of Nicaraguans’ lives. Since he got to power fifteen years ago, after a term in the presidency back in the 80’s, the former guerrilla member wiped out his political contenders inside the FSLN; took over judicial and electoral entities; made alliances with the country’s most prominent businesspeople; modified the Constitution to fit his needs and passed repressive laws; and finally, imprisoned seven presidential candidates who dared defy him. On top of these, he has censored and persecuted the media, which have been silenced and closed, forcing some to report from exile.

The aforementioned profiles Ortega as the leader of a family dynasty that is similar to Somoza’s, the one that he and other guerrilla members fought to overthrow in 1979. By now, Nicaragua has lost any trace of the egalitarian republic that complied with human rights, which Sandinistas fought to defend when they deposed Anastasio Somoza Debayle’s regime.

This feature reviews in detail all of the actions by Ortega since getting back in the presidency only to remain in power sparing no capriciousness.

I am Sandinismo

Ortega’s power is absolute nowadays: he controls the State’s entities and no one can overshadow him inside the FSLN, to the extent that he has been the only presidential candidate of the party, which was founded back on July 23^rd, 1961.

This is his eight candidacy and his second with his wife as formula for the vice presidency. The Sandinista leader ruled Nicaragua in the 80’s, amidst a war against the Nicaraguan Resistance, made up by former members of the Somoza dictatorship and sponsored by the United States. On February 25^th, 1990, Ortega was defeated by Violeta Barrios de Chamorro, the first woman to become elected president in the American continent. Following this setback, Ortega sentenced that he would rule “from the bottom” and he did, organizing riots, strikes and manifestations.

In the interim, with each move he pushed aside FSLN political leaders who could overshadow him. Consequently, experts and former comrades consulted by CONNECTAS concur in saying that Daniel Ortega has always had “dynastic” pretensions. In the opinion of human rights advocate Gonzalo Carrion, who has been in exile in Costa Rica for forty months, Ortega and Murillo’s is a “dictatorship that has proclaimed itself as almost divine” which now has the “entire country as its prison.”

Luis Fley is a former commandant of the Nicaraguan Resistance who fought against Ortega’s first government, he intended to run as potential presidential candidate for the upcoming election on November 7^th, and he agrees with Carrion: “he is a totalitarian by nature… he has always had the dictator germ, he has been the eternal secretary general of his party.” Fley was recently forced into exile because “they began imprisoning potential candidates; they began with Cristiana (Chamorro), all that was left for me was to sit and wait for my turn to go to jail. I, Luis Fley, am not going to jail.”

Inside the FSLN, since he became president in 2007, Ortega and his closest circle were scratching those who criticized him and disputed his power. This meant removing the party’s likely presidential figures, such as Victor Hugo Tinoco, former chancellor and member of parliament, and Herty Lewites and Dionisio Marenco, former mayors of Managua. Lewites was left with no choice but to leave the Front and run for president as part of MRS (Movimiento Renovador Sandinista), the current UNAMOS (Unidad Democratica Renovadora), he died of a heart attack on July 2^nd, 2006, four months before the general election that got Ortega back in power.

Monica Baltodano, a former guerrilla commandant who recently exiled to Costa Rica, explains that she and Lewites watched Ortega become a caudillo inside the FSLN, and warned that he was set to become the country’s dictator. “The policies he is applying overall in society were first applied inside the Sandinista Front, he subject those who dissented from this political line with exclusion, trampling and punishment.”

Ruben Arriola, leader of the Domitila Lugo neighborhood in Managua, capital of Nicaragua, says he started being disliked in the ranks of the FSLN from the moment in which he opposed a garbage project in the coast of lake Managua or Xolotlan. Arriola believes Ortega and the Sandinista Front no longer represent the revolutionary mystique. About Ortega, he adds that he never thought that he could become “arrogant and conceited” nor that he “assaulted his political adversaries” as he has done with Nicaragua’s potential presidential candidates, whom he imprisoned this year.

I am the State

Sixteen years after his electoral defeat against Violeta Chamorro, Daniel Ortega won the election held on November 5^th, 2006, his victory was the consequence of a constitutional reform sealed in a pact with former president Arnoldo Aleman Lacayo. He enticed a division of the Liberal party and changed the electoral system to adapt it to Ortega’s needs: decreasing the percentage of votes to win the election in the first round to 35%.

That is how Ortega, seemingly a moderate, conciliator who had converted to Catholicism, defeated a divided opposition. He took office on January 10^th, 2007, with the presence of former Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez, who was his main ally and benefactor up to his death.

Per the analysis of sociologist Elvira Cuadra, a researcher specialized in security, by the time he became president in 2007, Ortega began controlling the judicial and electoral (Refer to The Commander’s Justice). Moreover, he adds that the president tried to reform the organization of the executive branch with the particular aim of controlling the Army and Police forces: “He initiated an accelerated cooptation process through perks, buying loyalties, political clientelism … it is clear in the case of the Police’s promotions…” (Refer to In Nicaragua, Impunity Rides in Police Cars)

Currently, the opposition asserts that the Police is biased and acts as political force at the service of the presidential family’s interests. Daniel Ortega is its supreme leader and the First Commissioner Francisco Diaz Madriz is in charge of its direction. Diaz and Ortega are related through their children's marriage.

This police State has undermined public liberties and institutionality. According to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), in the context of the serious sociopolitical crisis that began with the repressions of April 2018, 328 people have been murdered, 2,000 have been wounded, 1,614 have been imprisoned as reprisal for having taken part in the protests, and over 100,000 have migrated to protect their lives, integrity and freedom.

Concurrently to controlling the security forces and up to the sociopolitical uprising of 2018, Ortega sustained an alliance with the Nicaraguan private sector, a joint government dubbed “Model of Alliance, Dialog and Consensus”, which was presented as the magical formula for the country’s economic growth. While conducting businesses, the private sector disregarded the decline of institutionality and turned a blind eye when Ortega changed the constitution to seek reelection (Refer to Daniel Ortega’s Love Affair with Big Capital).

Aside from his alliance with businesspeople, Ortega fostered welfare programs for the poorest segment of the population, with the aid of Venezuela through the ALBA (Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America, for its Spanish acronym), which gained him popular support. In fact, these programs are one of the reasons why people still support him.

Brenda Sancho Lopez, 67, is one of those people. “I like it when people get a wheelchair or groceries.” She sells refreshments in a street in the capital from 4 a.m. to 6 p.m. She has been a militant of the FSLN since she was 17 and she is part of Gabinete de la Familia, Comunidad and Vida del barrio Reparto Chick, an organization that has helped the FSLN to monitor and control partisanship in each neighborhood.

Marina Perez Gonzales sells clothes. Like Brenda, she is a supporter of Ortega because she has seen him help the people. Pedro Diaz, a private driver, has the same opinion: “He has worked for the country in road works, he supports poor people and that is why I side with him.”

Evelio Alvarado Zeledon, a private security guard, says that Ortega “is good with poor people, he gives to those in need.”

Nevertheless, his opponents consider that Ortega is aware that even with the robust votes of the Sandinista Front, he could lose in a free, transparent and observed election. Thus, they claim he has removed any obstacles prior to the election of November 7^th, 2021.

I am the constitution

After four years in the administration, Daniel Ortega could not run for the presidential reelection in 2011. Article 147 in the Political Constitution of Nicaragua forbids him. At that moment, the Sandinista leader had only 38 members in the National Assembly, so he did not have the required votes to amend the constitution. He so resorted to the Supreme Court of Justice (SCJ), which they had attained to subject through a pact with Arnoldo Aleman.

Thus, on October 19^th, 2009, a judgment of the Constitutional Chamber at the SCJ gave free rein to reelection by accepting an application of amparo brought by Ortega and 109 mayors of his party. The decision stated article 147 of the Political Constitution unenforceable as it infringed Ortega’s human rights and the equality principle, according to judges. The sentence was ratified by the full Court on September, 30^th, 2010.

That was how the president was re-elected for the first time in 2011 with 62.64 percent of the votes. Fabio Gadea, his main opponent, did not recognize the outcomes and denounced electoral fraud, a claim that was accepted in 2021 by the IACHR — ten years after that election.

With his first reelection accomplished and already 62 seats in the Parliament, Ortega continue to promote political reforms to perpetuate himself in power. On January 28^th, 2014, the National Assembly approved a constitutional amendment that allowed indefinite reelection. In that way, on November 6^th, 2016, Ortega stood once more as a presidential candidate, this time with his wife Rosario Murillo as running mate. El SEC adjudicated Ortega 72.4 percent of the votes in an election that was characterized by abstention and untrustworthiness.

Ortega’s striving for perpetuating himself in power and making an unobstructed dynasty with his wife has increasingly less legal ground. When the SCJ gave free rein to his reelection in 2009, the Constitutional Chamber’s former president declared that the sentence had as a legal ground the legal decisions in Costa Rica and Colombia that favored oscar Arias and alvaro Uribe former presidents, respectively.

On August 13^th that year, though, the IACHR issued a resolution answering a query sent by Colombia on “the figure of the indefinite presidential reelection” in October 2019, which considers that it should not be implemented in the region because is not an autonomous human right. Besides, it mentioned that the prohibition of the interdiction of the indefinite presidential reelection aims to ensure representative democracy and to prevent the power concentration in the head of state at a presidential system. This is what is precisely taking place in Nicaragua, growing worse after the protests and the repression of 2018.

On April 18^th of that year, dozens of Nicaraguans took the streets to protest against some social security reforms. Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo responded with violence. Their crash forces, wearing White T-shirts and love and peace messages, attacked those who were protesting, stole cameras and cellphones, hurt dozens of people, and took several tv channels off the air.

Ortega has suppressed citizens’ protest for 11 years, but no Nicaraguan had been killed. A day after these massive protests started, Richard Pavon, Darwin Manuel Urbina, and Hilton Rafael Manzanares died; the list of victims got longer as the days passed by.

Ortega withdrew the amendment to social security on April 22^nd in an attempt to ease the protests and contribute to a peaceful solution for the political crisis through dialog. Nonetheless, his reaction was belated given the shock and outrage for the murders. Mass marches almost countrywide, and especially in Sandinista bastions such as Masaya, Leon, Carazo, Esteli, Matagalpa, and Jinotega, demanded justice for the people killed and the resignation of Ortega and Murillo.

But the presidential couple kept suppression at the sight of their continuity in power is seriously menaced.  What happened in 2018, from the official line, was an “unsuccessful attempted coup”. Ortega accused protesters of being “terrorists” and, up to date, more than 140 people are deprived of freedom for political reasons.

Coming November, the Ortega and Murillo regime, accused of committing crimes against humanity, is looking for remaining in power for five more years.

I am the law

But, last year, he struck his last blow by approving a bill package that has allowed him to cancel any expression from dissidents: the Foreign Agents Act, the Special Cybercrime Bill, and the People’s Rights to Independence, Sovereignty and Self-determination for Peace Defense Act (Act 5055). The latter considers as “national traitors” those Nicaraguans who “leader or finance coup, disrupt the constitutional order, promote or urge terrorist acts, carry out activities that undermine independence, sovereignty and self-determination”. It also includes those who “promote foreign intervention into internal affairs, request military actions, organize with the finance of foreign powers to arrange terrorist and destabilization acts”, among other accusations.

From this package, Ortega has enforced Act 5055 to imprison 34 opposition leaders, entrepreneurs, and a journalist. The list of prisoners includes seven presidential candidates: Arturo Cruz, Cristiana Chamorro, Felix Maradiaga, Juan Sebastian Chamorro, Medardo Mairena, Miguel Mora and Noel Vidaurre.

Besides, Nicaraguan justice proceeded with the prosecution of 20 of the people under arrest. Novelist Sergio Ramirez, the winner of the Cervantes Prize of Literature, is included in that list. The once vice president of Ortega during his first mandate (1985-1990) and partner during the resistance against Somoza, was charged with as the rest of the accused opponents on September 7^th: “incite hatred” and “conspiring” against the country’s sovereignty. Ramirez, in exile nowadays, is threatened with an arrest warrant that would imprison him if he ever dares to return to Nicaragua.

Miss Nicaragua 2007, Berenice Quezada, who run for the vice presidency for the Citizens Alliance for Liberty (CAxL), was also restrained and charged by the Public Ministry under “incitation, planning, and conspiracy for committing terrorist attack”, with the caveat being charged at “liberty”.

“The most remarkable opposition leaders are behind bars. He (Ortega) is going to enforce his political model. After all, he is interested in pursuing legitimacy because he is internationally discredited. It is an illegitimate electoral process, but he wants that Nicaraguans participate in this electoral circus to be legitimated”, says Elvira Cuadra.

On August 13^th, during the 42^nd anniversary of the Naval Force of the Nicaraguan Army, Ortega explained that those being investigated “are the ones in charge of financing, organizing, seeking funds, looking for the support of the yanquis, and leading the crimes that took place in April 2018”.

He also blamed the entrepreneurs for “stabbing the country and the Nicaraguan people”. He reminded them that they “were very happy making money when our government promoted the Alliance” and that they “talked to the government with much respect about the dividends obtained from the Alliance at the economic and social orders.”

According to Ortega, the opponents were planning to “launch another wave of terrorism given these elections, disqualifying the elections, managed by the yanquis what are enemies to the peoples.”

The National Assembly —controlled by Ortega and Murillo with 71 of the 92 members— approved an amendment to the Electoral Law on May 4^th this year. But he ignored the recommendations made by the Organization of American States (OAS) and the UN Human Rights Council, who proposed the reestablishment of the democratic institutions and respect to human rights in Nicaragua. This through the free and fair elections using the modernization and restructuring of the Supreme Electoral Council (SEC) to guarantee that it works independently, with transparency and responsibility, as well as the update of the voters’ registry, the national and international electoral invigilation, and a pluralistic political process that allows the participation of new political parties. None of these was taken into account by Ortega, who fully controls the Electoral Court.

The electoral reform approved last May included the changes made through other acts. Article 63 states that “no political party” can receive public or private funds or donations from abroad, all these by the Foreign Agents Act and Law 5055. And article 81 added that “cannot the registered as candidates for elected positions those who have any impediment related to the Foreign Agents Regulation Act and the Peoples Rights to independence, Sovereignty and Self-determination Defense for Peace Act”. The 103 expands that the political parties, the parties’ alliances or any of their candidates “cannot receive funds from state institutions or mixed ones, being then National or foreign”, neither from “private ones when they are foreign or national established abroad.”

The amendment also removed the second round of voting by noting that “the candidates of the party or Alliance obtaining the highest number of valid votes are to be elected as President and Vice president of the Republic.”

On last May 6^th, two days after the amendment was approved, the new resident and deputy magistrates at the SEC took office, all being loyal to Ortega according to the opposition.

I am the President

Having the political amendments approved, the frame was given to run the elections with the parties and candidates liked by Ortega. Soon after taking office, the new magistrates at the SEC started to behead the opposing political parties.

On May 18^th of that year, they canceled the legal status of the Partido Restauracion Democratica (PRD), which had made its check box available to the Coalicion Nacional, Ortega’s biggest opposing group. “We received a resolution that notifies the cancellation of our legal status because we allied with people who promote death, lesbianism, and abortion”, stated Saturnino Cerrato, president of the PRD. The next day was the turn for the Partido Conservador (PC), whose legal status was canceled because it declared it won’t participate in the elections.

The party Ciudadanos por la Libertad (CxL) was revoked on August 6th by the SEC upon the request of Maria Haydee Osuna, legal representative of the Partido Liberal Constitucionalista (PLC), which is considered a collaborator of the NLSF. Besides, the electoral entity and the Ministry of the Interior canceled the Nicaraguan identity card and passport of the CxL president Carmella Maria Rogers Amburn, also known as Kitty Monterrey, presumably for serious violations of the Electoral Law and other constitutional rules.

“The Direccion de Atencion a Partidos Politicos confirmed that the political party Ciudadanos por la Libertad, has engaged in behaviors out of the legal technical conditions and regulations for this type of political organizations through verbal acts that undermine the independence, the sovereignty, and self-determination, which, according to its consideration, merit the cancellation of the legal status”, says the SEC resolution.

Amidst these arbitrary acts, the Coalicion Nacional has made a plea for not recognizing the elections of coming November 7th as illegitimate. According to the political analyst Oscar Rene Vargas, in the mindset of Ortega “the cost of losing the power is too high, there are too many interests involved”. Among them is the new Sandinista wealthy class or the entrepreneurial who benefited from Ortega’s public-private model, or those who are accused of committing crimes against humanity in the frame of a social-political crisis.

Tomas Borge Martinez, the founder of the NLSF who was the Minister of the Interior in the ’80s, had alerted after Ortega went back to the office in 2007 that: “Anything is possible but that the Sandinista Front loses the power (...). I told Daniel Ortega: we can pay any price, whatever they say, the only thing we can’t lose is power”.

For that reason, it was not enough for Ortega to pull out of play the opposing political parties and imprison the presidential candidates in the face of the coming elections. On May 20th, 2021, dozens of riot police officers raided the studios of the tv programs directed by the well-known Nicaraguan reporter Carlos Fernando Chamorro Esta Semana and Esta Noche for the second time. Already in 2018, the editorial of the programs had been taken by the police and are seized up to date and transformed into a Maternity Center by the Ministry of Health.

To Chamorro, this second seize represents “an assault to truth”, but clarified that they won’t silence them. “They can rob other cameras, other complements, they can occupy a place where we have produced some programs, but we will keep informing, they won’t silence our reporters”, said the reporter who was forced to go into exile for the second time to continue “informing in liberty”.

That same day, the police seized the old office of the Fundacion Violeta Barrios de Chamorro (FVBCH), an organization that suspend its operations last February 5th to avoid the Foreign Agents Act.

Cristiana Chamorro Barrios, daughter of former president Violeta Barrios and the National hero and martyr of the freedom of expression Pedro Joaquin Chamorro Cardenal, who at that moment was the main presidential candidate in Nicaragua, was summoned by the Ministry of the Interior as the former director of the FVBCH to answer for “inconsistencies” in the financial reports for the 2015-2019 periods. According to the government, “the Fundacion Violeta Barrios de Chamorro para la Reconciliacion y la Democracia, seriously breached its obligations to the Regulatory Body and of the Financial States of the 2015 – 2019 period. Clear evidence of money laundering was found”.

There were no rights of defense. The case was sent to the Public Ministry which started a manhunt for FVBCH former employees, media directors, and reporters beneficiaries of the projects supported by this organization at an unimaginable speed. On May 28^th, the police arrested Walter Gomez and Marcos Fletes, former manager and accountant of the FVBCH, respectively. Five days later, Cristiana Chamorro’s house was seized, and she was placed under house arrest.

On August 24^th, at covert hearings, without the presence of their lawyer and violations of due process, the Public Ministry charged the Chamorro brothers Cristiana, Carlos Fernando, and Pedro Joaquin of supposedly money laundering, abusive management, misappropriation, and unlawful withholding crimes”. Likewise, former employes of the Fundacion Ana Elisa Martinez, journalist Lourdes Arroliga, Walter Gomez, Marco Antonio Fletes, Emma Marina Lopez, Pedro Vasquez and Guillermo Medrano were charged.

Since May 28^th, at least 50 journalists have been summoned to declare at the Public Ministry concerning the investigation against the FVBCH, and where they have been threatened to be enforced with the Cybercrimes Act. This has caused the departure of more than 30 press employees from the country between June and August 2021 to protect their liberty and integrity.

The last blow against the media took place on August 13th, when the police seized the Diario La Prensa and started an investigation against its directors under the crimes of “customs fraud and money laundering”. The day before, the newspaper had announced the suspension of its print circulation due to the paper restraint by the General Customs Directorate. La Prensa manager, Juan Lorenzo Holmann Chamorro, was arrested by the police.

Nowadays, La Prensa newspaper keeps informing on the internet. Carlos Fernando Chamorro, from exile, continues to write against the abuses from the Ortega and Murillo regime, just as other Nicaraguans were forced to leave the country for avoiding falling prey to a judicial system that is ruled by the government at will, as has been denounced. Meanwhile, the election date of November 7th remains in place as the day when the guerrilla fought and defeated Somoza, the one who ruled Nicaragua in the ’80 and went back to the office in 2007, will be reelected once again after pulling all of his enemies and opponents out of the game, including his former activism comrades at the NLSF.