Ortega crushes opposition on way to full dictatorship
Nicaragua’s former darling of the Left is sure of victory in today’s election after jailing the competition
‘The opposition has to find a way to continue. We cannot simply turn off the lights and accept the dictatorship’
Shortly after police vans screeched into Juan Sebastián Chamorro’s neighbourhood in Managua he was on his knees with guns pointed at his head.
The presidential candidate pleaded not to be shot.
His crime? Daring to run against Daniel Ortega, Nicaragua’s authoritarian leader, once feted by the British Left but now dragging his country into tragic dictatorship and pariah status.
“They had no warrant, nothing,” Mr Chamorro’s wife Victoria Cárdenas, 46, told The Sunday Telegraph. “I couldn’t do anything as they bundled him away.”
The arrest surprised nobody. Police had been posted outside Mr Chamorro’s gated community in the capital city for months, following him wherever he went.
“They stayed in our house for four hours after they took him,” said Ms Cardenas, who has escaped with her 19-year-old daughter and not much else to the United States. “They ransacked everything. They destroyed our home. I can never go back there.”
Mr Chamorro, 50, is one of seven presidential candidates, who were arrested in the run-up to today’s election. In total, more than 40 opposition politicians have been imprisoned ahead of the vote, as
Ortega’s government moved to silence his challengers and further tighten his grip on power.
Trained by the Cubans in guerrilla warfare in the 1970s, Ortega was one of the major architects of the Leftist Sandinista uprising that overthrew the Somoza dictatorship in Nicaragua in 1979.
The young rebel went on to lead the communist junta as it battled USbacked Contra rebels trying to quash the revolution. Former US president Ronald Reagan referred to him as “the little dictator”, but his movement initially gained the backing of much of the British Left, including Jeremy Corbyn and his closest allies.
Ortega ruled Nicaragua until he lost the 1990 election to Mr Chamorro’s aunt, Violeta Barrios de Chamorro. Her daughter, Cristiana Chamorro, 67, was favourite to win today’s election until she was placed under house arrest and banned from running for office earlier this year.
Despite his defeat, Ortega remained an influential figure in Nicaraguan politics throughout the 1990s and returned to power in 2007. He has been in office ever since.
Today the 75-year-old president and his colourful wife, Rosario Murillo, who is also his vice president, are poised to win a crushing fourth consecutive term. The pair have managed to wipe out all serious opposition in what many commentators have referred to as one of the most intense waves of political repression in Latin America since the 1980s.
Ortega’s government has made many of the arrests under a new law, passed in December last year, granting it the right to declare citizens “terrorists” or “traitors to the homeland” and ban them from running in elections. It could also charge them with treason, which carries up to 15 years in prison.
Medardo Mairena is a presidential candidate who was arrested in July. The farming leader was released from prison in 2019 after serving 12 months of a 261-year sentence. He had been prosecuted for protesting against the government and opposing Chinesebacked plans to dig an inter-oceanic canal across Nicaragua. Mr Mairena, 42, was dragged from his home as he spoke to relatives on the telephone. His family, who have also confronted the regime, fear they will be targeted next. Mr Mairena’s younger brother missed the birth of his baby son because he has been too scared to leave hiding.
Relatives told The Sunday Telegraph that Mr Mairena is being subjected to round-the-clock interrogation. They say he has injuries and fear he could be being tortured.
Last week, Meta, the company behind Facebook and Instagram removed more than 1,000 fake accounts in Nicaragua, which it says were part of a disinformation campaign by the government. Meta said those who ran the accounts included staff at the country’s telecoms regulator and the supreme court.
The few opposition activists left in Nicaragua say the army has been deployed to intimidate people.
“There are checkpoints on every corner. People are being searched. It’s pure scare tactics,” said one antigovernment campaigner, who asked to remain anonymous.
Ortega has accused opposition politicians of plotting an uprising.
The EU’s foreign policy chief recently called Nicaragua “one of the worst dictatorships in the world”, and Washington has described today’s election as a sham. Ortega rules Nicaragua with a small group of relatives and loyalists. As his family has grown wealthier and more powerful, his anti-democratic tendencies have grown more pronounced.
“This is a battle for democracy,” opposition politician Kitty Monterrey, 71, told The Sunday Telegraph.
Ms Monterrey, who has an American father and a Nicaraguan mother, had her Nicaraguan citizenship revoked in August, but managed to flee the country.
“Staying didn’t make sense, they were going to take me to jail or they were going to deport me,” she said from exile in Costa Rica.
Ms Monterrey leads the Citizens Alliance for Liberty party, which was banned from standing in the elections.
“The opposition has to find a way to continue. We cannot simply turn off the lights and accept the dictatorship,” she said.