The Ortega regime has continued arresting principal opposition leaders as well as people who have announced their intention to run as candidates for the Nov 2021 elections. This is an analysis of what Ortega is doing by someone who knows him well.
The immediate strategy of Ortega-Murillo
by Oscar René Vargas, June 8, 2021 in 100% Noticias
- After the failure of the meeting last week between Blinken (Secretary of State of the US) and Moncada (Minister of Foreign Relations of Nicaragua) in Costa Rica; everything seems to indicate that the Ortega-Murillo regime has made the decision to continue increasing the repression and limiting even more political freedoms of the candidates and citizens without taking into account the pressure from the international community. They continue in their strategy of “power or death.”
- On the other hand, the formal opposition continues without a strategy that could stop the onslaught of the dictatorship, nor has it established red lines, that day by day would win positions to negotiate with absolute advantage at the moment of negotiations (after the electoral farse), rather it is committed to continue the logic of participating in elections no matter what it costs, following the script established by the dictator.
- The objective of increasing the repression on the part of the Ortega-Murillo regime is that it wants to convince independent journalists, sectors of the opposition and the citizens in general to abandon the struggle with a very clear warning: give up or you will be imprisoned; go into exile or you die.
- In some cases, opponents have been pressured with phone calls to them or their families, who are assured that they will not be bothered if the leader of the opposition goes into exile. They have gotten some to leave the country with this method.
- At the same time, in the strategic analysis of the Ortega-Murillo regime, it wants to take advantage of the blind spot in the policy of Biden toward Nicaragua, focused on resolving the migration issue of the Northern Triangle of Central America, to continue gaining ground from the point of view of his survival in power, no matter what the costs, because he is betting on the attrition or subjection of the formal opposition which would allow him to act with greater ease to continue receiving the support and/or silence of the powers that be which sustain him and allow him to not cede to international pressure.
- For Ortega-Murillo, what is important is getting to 2022 with the objective of being able to negotiate his permanence until 2025, with the hope that in that lapse of time a change would be produced in the correlation of forces in his favor which would allow him to continue in power, in exchange for promises of democratic reforms and lowering the gas of repression.
Oscar René Vargas, June 8, 2021