This is the last blog post Oscar René Vargas posted shortly before he was arrested, when hooded police without a warrant raided the home of his sister, who he was visiting due to her delicate health situation after clandestinely returning from exile in Costa Rica. In 1967 he and his brother risked their lives to save Daniel Ortega from capture by the Somoza National Guard after Ortega participated in the execution of a Guardsman considered especially brutal. He was an advisor to the National Directorate of the FSLN during the 1980s and was actually named Ambassador to France by Ortega in 2007. That nomination was revoked when Vargas gave an interview to La Prensa around that same time. He is 77 years old and recently received a pacemaker.
The strategy for the liberation of all political prisoners
By Oscar René Vargas in his blog November 21, 2022
The deterioration of the regime favors the erosion which undermines the bases of support for the dictatorship, which is going to cause a fracture in the walls of containment which it has created to survive: the police and paramilitary repression.
When will he free the political prisoners
The dictator will free the political prisoners when he has the need to do so. He will do it when the regime no longer has money to pay the military, police and paramilitaries; when he runs the risk of losing control of the streets, when the population returns to the streets holding small processions, express picketing in different ways, etcetera; when food insufficiency and hunger becomes unbearable. In other words, when he is put in a situation where worst things can happen if they do not free the political prisoners, when he has to choose between his survival in power and the freedom of all the political prisoners; then he will free the political prisoners.
Making transparent the corruption which weakens them
The spider web of illegal businesses at the cost of the public treasure has reached Pharoah-like dimensions on the part of the members of the nomenklature. Knowing themselves to be free from prosecution, members of the immediate circle of power and members of the first circuit of high-level functionaries have continued looting the coffers of the State everything that they can get by with, and it has been a lot. They believed that they would have more years to continue with their illicit businesses and would have enough time to expunge their traces. It is important to denounce the acts of corruption to further undermine their legitimacy on the international level and make international financing more difficult.
The US strategy
The US strategy is to continue applying new sanctions for the purpose of forcing the regime to negotiate an electoral outcome under international standards. According to the US government, these sanctions are the result of findings of illicit acts of money laundering, diversion of public funds and corruption. It is very probable that in coming months new sanctions will continue affecting officials and allies of the regime, be they members of the judicial system, the prosecutor´s office or others.
The need to win small battles
All the critiques of the regime are valid and welcome but lack a coherent alternative program of social and economic policy. Up to now, the opposition has not been able to offer a proposal to the serious social and economic problems that the population is suffering. For this reason surveys show the attrition of the regime and the incapacity of the opposition to take advantage of this languor.
The struggle against the dictatorship is missing an element, a true, strong opposition that might threaten to replace it: a coalition not only capable of criticizing the regime, but that equipped with an alternative program of public policies, might be able to win small battles in the process of the implosion of the regime. Surveys indicate the exhaustion of the regime, therefore, technically the opposition is strong and would be able to take power if it offers an alternative to the population.
What is the strategy to follow?
In the strategy that seeks to free political prisoners it is important to implement the internal implosion that implies encouraging that people begin to question everyone in the entire State apparatus (something similar to what is happening in the Supreme Court), when its social base begins to abandon ship (children, relatives and high-level officials of Ortega migrate), when sanctions strike a blow to the sources of financing of the dictatorship, and when he runs out of friends that quit approving financial support from the CABEI, IADB, IMF and World Bank. The combination of these four factors is when the dictatorship will see itself forced to free all the political prisoners.