How is Rosario Murillo governing?
In La Prensa, November 10, 2025
As Daniel Ortega turns 80 on November 11th, his control of the regime is increasingly weaker. These are the figures with which the co-dictator has consolidated the structure of power which serves her, and according to her plans, will serve her heir apparent, her son Laureano.
It is a secret to no one in Nicaragua that Rosario Murillo has become the absolute center of power. From her office behind the walls of the El Carmen complex in Managua she now controls the economy, repression, foreign policy, local governments and the few organs of the FSLN which are still useful to her, like the political secretaries of the Sandinista Front.
Daniel Ortega, who is turning 80 this month, sick, numbed and stiff, is little more than a puppet who repeats tiresome speeches on stages which are set up in the plazas for certain “revolutionary” dates, and begins to “dance” with the groups that show up to enliven the plaza, to hide the fact that the multitudes have disappeared.
But who are the chess pieces of Murillo, who now is 74 years old, with whom she has consolidated the structure which serves her, and according to her plans, will serve her heir apparent, her son Laureano?
In the sector of Economics and Finance
The management of public finances and the economy has fallen on the president of the Central Bank, Ovidio Reyes Ramírez, who is a type of super-minister of the economic area, in spite of the fact that in the past he was considered to be a figure of the imprisoned Bayardo Arce.
The ministers of Development, Industry and Commerce (Erwin Ramírez) and the Treasury and Public Credit (Oscar Mojica Aguirre) were named in August and September, respectively.
“For years Ovidio Reyes has been able to reach an understanding with Rosario Murillo and is the person who receives instructions from the co-dictator,” said a former official of the Ministry of the Treasury and Public Credit who has known Reyes Ramírez since he worked as an adviser to the liberal former minister of that portfolio, Eduardo Montealegre Rivas, in the government of the former president Enrique Bolaños, and who requested that his name not be used.
The repressive apparatus
With the fall into disgrace and supposed imprisonment of the presidential advisor in security affairs, Néstor Moncada Lau; the former assistant director of Police Intelligence, Adolfo Marenco Corea, who remains disappeared; the former minister advisor on security issues, Horacio Rocha López and the replacement of the head of the Office of Information for Defense (DID) of the Army of Nicaragua, brigade general Rigoberto Balladares, still in the ranks of the army; the tasks of persecution and intelligence of the regime have fallen on the Co-Chief of Police Affairs, the general commissioners Juan Victoriano Ruíz Urbina; the Vice Minister of the Interior, Luis Cañas and the General Commissioner and Assistant Director of the Police and Chief of Police Intelligence, Zhukov Serrano Pérez.
The little power that the in-law and Co-Chief of the Police Forces, Francisco Díaz, had is decorative.
In the DID Balladares was replaced by his second in command, Coronel Álvaro Peña Núñez.
The Attorney General of Justice (PGJ) has emerged as a new repressive 
element, led by Wendy Morales.The PGJ has absorbed the old Attorney General of the Republic which at least nominally continues being led by the former assistant director of the Police, Ana Julia Guido.
The diminished legislative and judicial “organs”
Article 132 of the Constitution reformed in 2025 guarantees the total control of the Executive over the branches of the State: “The presidency coordinates the organs of the legislature, judiciary, elections, and control and oversight, in fulfillment of the supreme interests of the people.”
During the 16 years of democratically elected governments the National Assembly was known as “the first branch of the State”, but now that through the constitutional reform it has been reduced to an organ of the Executive, Gustavo Porras, the eternal president, and Edwin Castro, the head of the FSLN bench, manage it at the whim of Murillo. The 91 deputies there only show up to press a button and never discuss any bill; they only approve what they are told from El Carmen.
The other organ, the Judiciary, should be led by the Supreme Court, but it continues dismantled even though the constitutional reforms were approved in the second legislature this past February. Murillo orders judicial decisions directly to the magistrate Marvin Aguilar 
who was named “acting president” of the Court since the destitution, still not official, of the magistrate Alba Luz Ramos.
”Turbulent” foreign policy
Even though foreign policy since Ortega´s return to power in 2007 has been the same: closer relations with authoritarian regimes like Venezuela, Russia, Cuba, Iran, and since December of 2021, China; the movement of officials have been continuous.
In July 2024 there was the fall of the powerful vice minister of Foreign Relations and director of foreign aid, Arlette Marenco, who was imprisoned along with her husband for supposed unauthorized acts of corruption.
The office of the minister has been occupied alternatively by Denis Moncada Colindres and Valdrack Jaentschke at different moments until arriving at the nomination, with the clear approval of Murillo, of two co-ministers of Foreign Relations, the only case in the world, this past September.
But who issues the orders in foreign policy? “In this, such a sensitive area for any government, clearly it is deduced that the co-dictator herself, Rosario Murillo, manages Nicaraguan diplomacy, as spluttering and erratic as it is, from her home, because even the speeches that the co-chancellors read have to be approved by her,” said a former ambassador of Nicaragua in the administrations of former presidents Arnoldo Alemán and Enrique Bolaños, who requested anonymity.
“And with the assignment of functions to her son, Laureano, so he is directly responsible for relations with China and Russia, Jaentschke as well as Moncada are being left relegated to the international sphere and serving as aids to Laureano, who in addition is the Presidential Advisor for Investment and Foreign Aid, the position which Álvaro Baltodano held,” said the source.
Control of the municipal governments through the Political Secretaries
At the end of last year, 21 mayors and 4 vice mayors had been destituted by the long arm of the dictatorship, despite their Sandinista militancy. The person responsible for carrying out the destitution of Sandinista mayors and vice mayors is none other than the secretary for organization of the FSLN, Fidel Moreno. In addition, he is the person 
who carries out the orders of Rosario Murillo to replace political secretaries like Evertz Delgadillo in León. Delgadillo was judicially tried for Betrayal of the Father land at the end of September last year.
The crushing of the 2018 rebellion allowed Murillo to consolidate her power
Analysts like Óscar René Vargas state that the social uprising of 2018 marked the inflection point which accelerated the absolute concentration of power. “The first ring of power was purged, but others remained – like Gustavo Porras or Fidel Moreno – who are key pieces of a second circle, directly subordinated to Rosario Murillo.”
The sociologist Vargas summarizes the new internal logic. “There is no longer ideology. Loyalty is bought with economic perks.” The analyst Juan Diego Barbarena agrees, “The structure has been reconfigured on material interests. The revolution was replaced by the administration of privileges.”
The so-called “historic” Sandinism is now history
There is nothing left of the so-called historic Sandinism; not a trace of the power that the iconic personalities of the Sandinista dictatorship of the 80s had.
Of the nine commandantes who comprised the old National Directorate of the Sandinista Front of the 80s, only one – the Mexican Victor Tirado López – continues supposed support for the dictatorship. Tirado does not hold any public posts nor has real influence; for more than four years he has been relegated to oblivion. Even his own son has denounced that the Mexican former commandante, now 85 years old and sick and the oldest of the former nine commandantes, has been publicly manipulated.
And former emblematic names of the old guerillas who now are well into old age are falling into oblivion, like: Bayardo Arce (76), the former presidential economic advisor, today in prison; and Álvaro Baltodano (73), retired Brigade General and former strong man of foreign investment, jailed. Others, like Humberto Ortega (R.I.P.), the brother of the co-dictator and founder of the Sandinista Popular Army, died in police custody.
Other former ministers of great influence, like the former Minister of Foreign Affairs Samuel Santos (87) and Emilio Rappaccioli (85), even though they remain on the State payroll as “advisers”, no longer have even the shadow of the power which they once had.
