Long-time head of state Daniel Ortega was re-elected in the presidential election in Nicaragua. A victory with an announcement, because Ortega and his wife had previously silenced all opponents.
Long-term President Daniel Ortega won the election in Nicaragua with 75 percent of the vote, according to preliminary results. However, the re-election of the head of state and his wife and deputy Rosario Murillo was de facto certain before the polls on Sunday. Because the 75-year-old ex-guerrilla commander and his 70-year-old right-hand man have been cracking down on the opposition for months.
The couple had all serious possible opponents put behind bars at the top of the state. A development thus continued: since his re-election in 2006, Ortega had ruled increasingly authoritarian.
Daniel Ortega: from hero to greedy ruler
As the leader of the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN), Ortega had been in power for eleven years after the 1979 revolution in Nicaragua, initially as part of a five-member government junta, and from 1985 as elected president. At the time, many Nicaraguans considered him a hero.
The son of a cobbler had already joined the Patriotic Youth at the age of 15, and two years later Ortega joined the left-wing guerrilla movement FSLN. He broke off his law degree for political struggle. He spent seven years in prison under the dictator Anastasio Somoza and was tortured. After his release in 1974, Ortega went into exile in Cuba and then rejoined the Sandinista.
After Somoza’s fall, Ortega tried to boost the country’s economy despite a US boycott. The US government also supported rebels fighting against the Sandinista revolution, the so-called Contras. By the time of a ceasefire in 1988, more than 50,000 people died in the conflict.
In 1990 Ortega lost his office to the conservative camp in elections. He spent 17 years in the opposition before being re-elected president in 2006. With financial support from his ideological ally Hugo Chávez from Venezuela, Ortega expanded social programs for the poor, many of which support him to this day.
Ortega’s style of government became increasingly authoritarian, and he systematically took action against political opponents. In 2014, his party pushed through a constitutional amendment that lifted the presidential term limit. In 2018 he violently suppressed mass protests in the country, killing 300 people. His wife is said to have played an important role in this development.
There is no way around “Comrade Rosario”
Murillo had been Ortega’s spokesperson since 2007 before officially becoming his deputy in 2017. She accompanies the head of state on all public appearances. She provides her explanations with poetry and references to God and the virgin, she preaches love and reconciliation, and in the next sentence she describes political opponents as “devils”, “terrorists” and “scum”.
Even behind the scenes, in everyday political life in Nicaragua there is no way around “Comrade Rosario”, as officials say. “She decides herself on the colors of the benches in public parks,” said a diplomat about the great niece of the national hero César Sandino, namesake of the Sandinista.
Murillo is considered superstitious and esoteric. Visually, she maintains an eccentric style with large necklaces and floral decorations. The capital Managua had them “embellished” with dozens of so-called trees of life: kitschy metallic light installations that cost the state treasury a fortune.
Ortega and Murillo have been a couple since the days of the revolution against the Somoza dictatorship. They met in exile in Venezuela at the end of the 1970s. After 30 years, they tied the knot in 2005.
They have seven children together. Zoilamérica Narvaez, a daughter of Murillo from a previous marriage, accused her stepfather of sexually abusing her in 1998. Murillo sided with her husband, and her daughter fled abroad. Not only Narvaez judges: The couple “would do anything” to stay in power.
Source From: Stern
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