TODAY NICARAGUA – In an opinion post this January 10, 2022, Carlos F. Chamorro, independent journalist and founder of Confidencial, son of Nicaragua’s former president, Violeta Barrios de Chamorro, recalls the 44th anniversary of the assassination of his father, journalist, director of La Prensa, and anti-Somoza political fighter Pedro Joaquín Chamorro Cardenal, executed under the dictatorship of Anastasio Somoza in 1978.
Today also marks the inauguration of a fourth consecutive term of Daniel Ortega, who Chamorro says is an “absent character” and is “not a legitimately elected president, but a jailer of an entire nation”.
Chamorro lives his second exile in Costa Rica, facing the imminent threat of arrest by the Ortega regime. In August 2021, the Nicaraguan Prosecutor’s Office charged him with the crimes of money, property and asset laundering, appropriation and improper retention and abusive management.
The following is a translation from the article in Confidencial.com.ni:
His painful murder marked a before and after in Nicaraguan history. The general indignation that it provoked in all sectors of the country and the demand for justice, led to an outbreak of national protest, which unleashed the popular insurrection against Somoza.
Eighteen months later, the Somoza dictatorship, which seemed unbeatable, was overthrown by a political-military movement led by the Sandinista Front, supported by a great alliance of national and international unity.
At the conclusion of the constituent process in 1987, January 10 was established in the Constitution of the Republic as the date on which a new period of Government begins in Nicaragua, as a tribute to the Martyr of Public Liberties, and as a commitment to State with its legacy of democratization and social justice.
However, today, January 10, the fourth consecutive cycle of a dictatorship is inaugurated, the 15th year of the Ortega Murillo family dictatorship. A totalitarian dictatorship that represents the antithesis of what Pedro Joaquín Chamorro, a man who preached by example, symbolizes.
The principles and values of full democracy and free elections; political pluralism and accountability; non-reelection, separation of public affairs from private interests, and fight against corruption; reforms with social justice; Freedom of the press and freedom of expression were promoted in the first democratic transition that my mother Violeta Barrios de Chamorro presided over in 1990, before the derailment of democracy began, until they were finally violated under the Ortega Murillo dictatorship.
In 2012, the National Assembly declared Pedro Joaquín Chamorro a National Hero, but the hate speech of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo, and their desperation to screw themselves into power, has tried by all means to erase their legacy from the collective memory. They have denigrated him, persecuted him, and tried to imprison him, but they have failed time and time again.
During the outbreak of the rebellion in April 2018, the banners of democracy, freedom and social justice of Pedro Joaquín Chamorro resurfaced with greater force, and those same ideals today support the resistance of more than 160 political prisoners in prisons, demanding the end of the dictatorship and free elections.
This January 10, 2022, a corrupt family dictatorship intends to impose itself above the aspirations of the great blue and white majority of Nicaraguans, who demand a democratic republic.
The absent character who will take office today is not a legitimately elected president, but the jailer of an entire nation, the supreme leader of the paramilitaries. A tyrant entrenched in the bunker of El Carmen who is afraid of freedom, the dictator accused of crimes against humanity who does not dare to walk the streets of his country, without a voluminous police escort armed to the teeth.
Ortega and Murillo order and command, but they no longer govern. And they cannot offer any way out of peace, democracy, and progress to Nicaraguans, because they cannot govern without a police state and without political prisoners. Entrepreneurs, producers and professionals know that very well; young people and entrepreneurs who are emigrating en masse from a country with no future. The Sandinistas themselves also know it, even the sycophants and the ruling leadership, and above all the civilian and military public employees, who are also hostages of the dictatorship.
In reality, everyone knows, including the international delegates of governments who attend the act of usurpation of power, that today a new period of government is not beginning in Nicaragua, but rather the countdown of a dictatorship that is in terminal crisis.
Ortega and Murillo may prolong their agony for a time, imposing greater quotas of pain and sacrifice on the nation, but sooner or later the civic resistance of Nicaraguans will bury the dictatorship, and with the democratic legacy of Pedro Joaquín Chamorro, Nicaragua will return to be a Republic.
Read the original here.
Article originally appeared on Today Nicaragua and is republished here with permission.
