TODAY NICARAGUA – The Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional (FSLN) – Sandinista Front – ratified in a virtual Congress Daniel Ortega for president and his wife Rosario Murillo as vice-president to participate in the November 7 elections, maintaining the family dynastic succession in power.
While this would be Murillo’s second term as vice president, Ortega intends to achieve his third consecutive reelection and therefore, his fourth presidential term, when, not if elected.
This is also the eighth time that Ortega has been formalized as a candidate of the FSLN, since he has not allowed anyone from this same organization to compete both in his candidacies for the presidency of the republic, as well as for the position of secretary-general of the party.
This Monday at the end of the afternoon, Ortega and Murillo, along with the rest of the candidates, were presented and registered in the Supreme Electoral Council (CSE), dominated by supporters of the FSLN.
Dynastic succession
When Ortega wins the next elections – a situation that is expected because he has eliminated electoral competition and violated civil liberties in Nicaragua – his term would end in 2027, which means that the Sandinista leader will be in power for 20 consecutive years, more than any other ruler in the history of Nicaragua. This without taking into account the five years that he governed in the 80s as president and the 16 years in the opposition, “in which he governed from below.”
However, analysts believe that Ortega’s true objective is to leave open the path of family dynastic succession through Murillo, for which he would be renouncing power sometime during his mandate, perhaps midway, to make way for Murillo to remain in the presidential chair.
The director of Confidencial.com.ni, Carlos Fernando Chamorro, who is in exile due to the persecution and attempts of the Ortega-Murillo regime to imprison him, wrote in an opinion column that the project of the dynastic succession of Ortega and Murillo ended the citizen protests of April of 2018, which were violently repressed.
“This Monday the presidential formula of the Sandinista Front was registered with which Ortega intends to impose a dynastic succession on the country, by keeping his wife Rosario Murillo as vice-presidential candidate. However, since the outbreak of the civic protests in April 2018, when the country’s blue and white political majority massively demanded the end of the dictatorship and early elections, Ortega and Murillo lost the November 2021 elections. forever buried the project of a dynastic dictatorship and a presidential candidacy of Murillo in 2021,” wrote Chamorro.
What Chamorro was referring to is: “By imprisoning his main political competitors, Ortega also wiped out the legitimacy of the November elections”.
Virtual Congress
Due to the pandemic, the Congress of the Sandinista Front was held through virtual broadcasts, with Ortega and his wife from their home in El Carmen, the Ortega family compound, accompanied by the Secretary-General of the Managua Mayor’s Office, Fidel Moreno, while 28 delegations from the FSLN party from all over the country, including Managua.
The delegations were known as the Unidades de Victoria Electorales (UVE) – Electoral Victory Units – of the departmental capitals of the country. These were installed last November and “consist of strengthening the organization and above all, retaking the legacy of the Héroes y Mártires (Heroes and Martyrs), to continue defending the Revolution,” says a publication by the ruling party El 19 Digital.
In practice, the UVEs organize political rallies and promote the territorial organization of the government party.
After the “unanimous” vote with which the FSLN candidates were ratified, Murillo took the floor to thank the support of the congressmen and the party, for her tenure as vice president and for running her again in a new candidacy.
In his speech, Ortega outlined a remembrance of the personalities, whose names are carried by the UVEs that participated in the party event; and he again lashed out at the clergy of the Catholic Church, whom he now accuses of “blessing” the atrocities of the Somoza dictatorship.
“The hypocrisies, the false attitudes of what Christ called merchants of the temple who disguised themselves as priests and took over the temples and deceived the people and behaved as if they were the highest moral authority,” said the president.
“The message of Christ does not need intermediaries. God to communicate with people, with families, neither God nor Christ needs these Pharisees as intermediaries. For something he is God, for something he is Christ. They never said that intermediaries will be sought to communicate with them,” he added.
Article originally appeared on Today Nicaragua and is republished here with permission.
