SAN LOSE (AFP): First they jailed their opponents, now they’ve set their sights on the Catholic Church: Nicaragua’s first couple — President Daniel Ortega and his wife, Vice President Rosario Murillo — are in a bid for absolute control over the lives of citizens, experts say.
The former guerilla and his partner have steadily increased their grip on power since he returned to the nation’s top office in 2007, particularly via constitutional reforms that removed presidential term limits.
This style of government “concentrates discretionary decision making in the hands of the presidential couple,” sociologist Elvira Cuadra, who lives in exile, told AFP.
The shift towards authoritarianism effectively allows Ortega to rule for life, she said. “What we have is the building of a cult of personality,” said Eliseo Nunez, an analyst and former legislator also living in exile.
Things have become markedly worse in Nicaragua since the brutal repression of anti-government protests in 2018 that left more than 350 people dead. In the last year alone, the government arrested 46 opposition figures and critics, while the courts sentenced them to up to 13 years in prison. Among those detained were seven presidential hopefuls prevented from standing in last November’s elections when Ortega won a fourth consecutive term.
It is not just the opposition and detractors being marginalized or persecuted, however. Ortega’s Sandinista National Liberation Front party is being purged of dissenting voices within.
And now, the Catholic Church has become the last bastion of resistance and rebellion against the government, riling the presidential couple.
In her daily speeches, Murillo has called criticism by bishops a crime and “a sin against spirituality.”
Rolando Alvarez, the bishop of the northeastern city of Matagalpa, has now been confined to his Managua residence for more than a week, after the government accused him and the Catholic Church of inciting violence to destabilize the country.
“What has happened is that the government has always wanted a mute church, it doesn’t want us to speak, nor to denounce injustice,” said Alvarez. Legislator Wilfredo Navarro told the Sandinista Canal 4 television station that Alvarez and other priests were “false prophets” and accused them of playing politics.
Ortega and Murillo “have their own ideas, they’re closing up the country, canceling critical voices,” said Cuadra.
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