Rosario Murillo, the eccentric and powerful “co-president of Nicaragua”

By Wilder Pérez R.

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – First, he called her the “eternally loyal,” and now, a few days before the general elections, he named her “co-president of Nicaragua”.

She is Rosario Murillo, Vice President of Nicaragua and wife of Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega, who will seek re-election for five more years in the midst of the arrest of seven aspiring presidential candidates the opposition, who were emerging as their main rivals.

Read also: Check out our coverage on Nicaragua

Before an official delegation from Russia, Ortega showered praise on Murillo, a petite woman in her 70s, who stands out for her flowery attire, as well as for the contrast of her attire, usually overflowing with rings, bracelets, and face paints, which are often in tune with calls for peace, appeals against opponents, and accusations of necromancy.

The day her husband declared her “co-president”, both were on a circular dais, surrounded by 250 buses arranged in rows from Russia, which was quickly identified in social networks as the figure of Aten, a god of Egyptian mythology, kind, but opposed to what Murillo defines as “Christian government”.

This is the most recent of the controversies surrounding the Nicaraguan first lady.

In 2018 an audio put her at the center of accusations for the death of at least 328 anti-government protesters, according to data from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR).

In the audio, a voice was heard, which some local media identified as that of the secretary of the Managua Mayor’s Office, Fidel Moreno, transmitting to the Sandinistas an alleged order from Murillo: “Let’s go all out”, after which the fatal attacks would have been unleashed.

LOVE AND HATE

The speeches of the vice-president, who every noon from Monday to Friday is presented in the official media as the “partner” in charge of the Council of Communication and Citizenship, show a different scenario.

If one associates the name of the first lady of Nicaragua with the word “hate” in Google, more than 374,000 results appear, but if one relates it with “love”, the number shoots up to 5.9 million.

The Google numbers contrast with the results of a recent Cid Gallup poll, which showed that only 17% of the 1,200 respondents were willing to vote for Ortega and his “co-president” in next Sunday’s elections, with seven opposition candidates awaiting news in prison.

The opposition National Coalition, composed of several dissident organizations and the exiles associated in Nicaraguans Abroad (NEEM), in addition to organizations of victims of the 2018 violence and those defending human rights, have called the 2021 elections a “farce”.

CONFRONTATION WITH THE FAITH

The Nicaraguan Episcopate, critical of Ortega, has identified itself with the victims and has made repeated appeals to the faith and conscience of its faithful in the face of the elections.

Murillo has also had disagreements with the bishops and priests, whom, like her husband, she has accused of allegedly being behind an alleged “failed coup” in 2018, which is pending evidence, and for which she has pointed to the clergy as being “terrorists”, “disgusting wolves”, “sons of the devil”, or “pastors in disguise”.

The clergy does not return epithets, but during the 2018 national dialogue to resolve the crisis of that year, in the only time Murillo visited the Interdiocesan Seminary “Our Lady of Fatima”, in the decoration stood out the Medal of St. Benedict, considered in Catholicism as a weapon to confront evil.

In 2021, the Mexican priest Héctor Ramírez, a former chaplain in Fatima, identified Murillo as “the second most important witch in the world”.

“In the mission that I had to do, which took me to 23 countries in a year and a half (…), every time I was accumulating experiences and I was hearing things, for example, The second most important witch in the world is here in America, Ortega’s wife, she is a witch in all rules, now do you understand why this regime has been in power for 40 years and does not fall?” said Ramirez, in a video that went viral in Nicaragua.

MAXIMUM POWER

What there is no doubt about is Murillo’s power. In her almost daily speeches, she issues orders, rebukes ministers, decides campaigns, expresses wishes that end up coming true, or approves when a high official should be recognized as having passed “to another plane of life”.

Murillo’s daughter and Ortega’s stepdaughter, Zoilamérica Narváez, matched her mother’s power with that of the ruler two years before the vice president was declared “co-president.”

“There is, at this point, a fusion, a perverse fusion, where Daniel Ortega is the absolute justification for a brutal and despotic exercise of Rosario Murillo to preserve power and, in addition to that, to make Nicaragua the kingdom for life,” Father Narvaez told the portal Confidential.

Ortega and Murillo have already proclaimed themselves the winners of the next elections, an announcement which, if confirmed, would guarantee them another five years at the head of a self-styled two-headed power.

With information from EFE

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