By Judith Flores
(Opinion) Daniel Ortega’s dictatorship leaves no options for a way out of the crisis other than a social explosion or armed struggle.
With total control of the powers of the State and the armed and paramilitary forces, an international community with no capacity to force him to restore democracy, and screwed into power, Ortega is preparing the way to install the dynasty with his sons.
Political analysts agree that his successor will be Laureano Ortega, one of the ten children of the presidential couple – a man of few interviews who has gained prominence because he “manages” as an “investment” advisor, as Chancellor, special envoy, and whatever the dictatorship of his parents orders him to do.
Writer and political analyst Franklin Sequeira, author of the book “Los Cimientos de la tiranía” (The Foundations of Tyranny), affirms that Ortega is determined that power does not leave the family circle.
He believes that the one who will define the dynastic succession will be his wife and Vice President Rosario Murillo (71 years old), who has a lot of power and who Sequeira believes would replace Ortega in case of death.
“But who will be her successor is unclear and could be between Laureano and Rafael Ortega. Although the latter is not the dictator’s biological son, he is a man who has accumulated a lot of power under the shadow.
“He even has more power than the brothers. He studied in the North Korean counterintelligence, and the information is that he is the person with more power than the brothers”.
For exiled oppositionist Christian Martinez, the foundations for the Ortega dynasty began in 1979.
“Since Daniel Ortega assumed the coordination of the so-called National Reconstruction Junta and his brother Humberto Ortega founded the Sandinista Popular Army with the support of the Cuban dictatorship and took the general command.
“From there, the foundations are created, but it was interrupted by the 10-year war.”
“The second phase began in 1990. The three democratic governments were structured. They (the Sandinistas) managed it because they governed from below.
“The third phase is the seizure of power through political negotiations that reduced the percentage to win the presidential election from 51% to 35%, which allowed Ortega to return to power.
“And it takes hold as of April 18, 2018, with the support of the Army and the Police, the base on which Ortega is governing,” explained Martínez.
Sequeira and Martínez agree that the political face would be Laureano, but power would be handled by Rafael Ortega Murillo, the biological son of Rosario Murillo, who accompanies his adoptive father on all trips and his brother Laureano on behalf of his parents’ regime.
Luis Fley, a politician in exile and former head of the now defunct ‘Contra’, which fought the first Sandinista dictatorship, assures that Ortega has no will to change anything in Nicaragua and is also of the opinion that the dictator prepares the conditions for his dynasty.
“He wants to stay in power and be succeeded by his son Laureano Ortega and turn Nicaragua into a North Korea, which has been ruled by a dynasty.”
Facts such as Ortega’s brutal repression, the hostility against the international community demanding changes, the recent breaking of relations with the Netherlands, and the expulsion of diplomats whom he accuses of being “interventionists” leave no doubt that Ortega does not want changes, according to the analysts consulted.
Ortega expelled from the country the ambassador of the European Union (EU), Bettina Muscheidt, after the 27-nation bloc called for “the release of political prisoners and an end to the repression” against the opposition, priests, and the media.
It broke off relations with the Netherlands after the Dutch ambassador for Central America, Christine Pirenne, informed the regime during her visit to Managua that they would not finance a hospital in Nicaragua’s Atlántico state.
To these last actions must be added the strong attack of the Sandinista regime against the OAS, the UN, the United States, the Vatican, and the countries that have questioned the fourth consecutive mandate that Ortega attributed to himself in 2021 after imprisoning and exiling his worthy contenders.
Ortega attacked the Vatican and described it as a “perfect dictatorship”. According to him, the Catholic Church is promoting a coup d’état.
In March, he expelled from Nicaragua the apostolic nuncio Waldemar Stanislaw Sommertag, an action that Pope Francis valued in mid-September as “something very serious from the diplomatic point of view,” emphasizing that the Vatican is not prepared to break relations or contact with Nicaragua.
These and other facts confirm that Ortega is betting on staying in power at any cost.
“Nicaragua is once again a country where freedoms are not respected,” Fley said, adding that the tyrant is leading the country into a crisis that could lead to an armed rebellion like that of 1979 and then that of the 1980s, two wars to overthrow two dictatorships, the Somocista and the Sandinista.
“Where the Nicaraguan people are going to say enough is enough and get involved in armed rebellion,” Fley maintains.
Over the weekend, the presence of armed rebels claiming to be fighting against tyranny became known.
The armed group ambushed a vehicle belonging to the cocoa exporter Agro Industrial del Río, presumably owned by Laureano Ortega Murillo, “who uses Mr. Emiliano Baltodano as a front man,” said Roberto Palacios, who identifies himself as a spokesman for the armed group that calls itself “Comando Libertador Nicaragüense” (Nicaraguan Liberation Command).
The confrontation left six dead: three police officers and three paramilitaries, who were guarding the transfer of money, according to the rebels, who seized several rifles, revolvers, and NIO 500,000 (US$14,000), which they claim they used for the purchase of weapons.
Political analyst Oscar Rene Vargas, a Sandinista dissident intellectual in exile, has told the media that everything indicates that Ortega’s successor would be his son Laureano.
“I think Ortega and Murillo have decided that he will be the successor. All indications lead me to have that opinion,” Vargas recently told BBC Mundo.
Vargas knows what he is saying. He was close to Ortega and saved his life in November 1967 when the National Guard was looking for the killers of a National Guard officer who had been executed days earlier.
According to newspaper reports in La Prensa, one of those who participated in the crime was Ortega.
With one of his brothers, Vargas took Ortega and another insurgent out of the safe house where he was hiding to avoid their apprehension.
In his analysis, Vargas maintains that Ortega’s logic is power or death and that he will do everything possible to keep it “because he knows that he has nothing to offer without power.
“It is his political death, which he does not want (…) His strategy is power or death because he wants to build a dynasty with his children, not Murillo.
“He is in that logic of not leaving anything aside, destroying any loophole that could hinder his strategy. That is what no one has understood”, Vargas has expressed in his opinion articles and interviews with the media.
With information from Gaceta