The reform to the General Law of Education and the Law of Autonomy of Higher Education Institutions (IES), which excluded the Central American University (UCA) from the new National Council of Universities (CNU), has as its sole objective “to consolidate the political control” of the Ortega-Murillo regime in the universities, said Ernesto Medina, an education specialist and former rector of the Universidad Americana (UAM) and UNAN-León.
“With the reform what they seek is to give legal support to the control, because the control was already being exercised through officials loyal to the regime; They made a legal cover for all these arbitrariness so that through an institution the control of the universities is carried out. That is the role that the CNU (National Council of Universities) is now going to play, which is given absolute power over the universities,” Medina said in an interview on the program This weekwhich is broadcast this Sunday, April 3 on Facebook and YouTube due to television censorship.
On March 31, the National Assembly —controlled by deputies faithful to the Ortega-Murillo regime— approved reforms to the laws that govern higher education.
In addition to stripping the UCA of the constitutional 6%, new powers were given to the CNUsuch as approving or denying career openings and academic programs, which disrupts university autonomy.
Medina recalled that the CNU was first created as a coordinating body, because in a country where universities supposedly have full autonomy, there was no room for a higher body. “Now they give it powers to supervise the management, which violates the administrative autonomy of the universities and they also give it the power to intervene in the universities,” he said.
The expert pointed out that, although the initiative of the approved reforms cites the search for a supposed strengthening of the higher education subsystem, “one cannot speak of strengthening a subsystem because it is as strong as its parts, and here it is it is weakening the universities, which are key pieces of the subsystem, by completely taking away their autonomy”.
“Suppressing autonomy in the way they are doing it and with the type of political control that exists in the universities, is killing the soul of the universities. The soul of the university is the search for truth and you can only do it if you have a critical spirit, a free mind, freedom to think, to act, to investigate, and in Nicaragua that is not possible. The very idea of what the university is is being killed,” added Medina.
Regime seeks to economically drown the UCA
The education expert affirms that the regime appealed against the UCA through economic drowningseparating it from the CNU and access to 6%.
“They know that the same ridiculous considerations that they used to cancel the legal status of other universities could not be applied to the UCA, nor could they arbitrarily close it,” he said.
In the last four years, the Central American University stopped receiving 250.9 million cordobas in budget allocations, according to an analysis of CONFIDENTIAL. In 2022, he barely received one million cordobas, as part of the 6%.
The professor considered that these measures imposed by the Ortega regime against the UCA also aim to “give signals to other universities, telling them, if we can with the UCA, we can with anyone, so they better line up, because their ultimate goal is silence the critical voices that can still remain in the universities”.
In the first quarter of 2022, the National Assembly canceled the legal status of five private universities in the country and the CNU occupied their facilities. The deputies loyal to the regime were in charge of creating three new state universities with the confiscated premises and assets.
The canceled universities were the Polytechnic University of Nicaragua (Upoli) – stronghold of the civic struggle of April 2018 -, the Nicaraguan Popular University (Uponic), the Catholic University of the Dry Tropics (Ucatse), the Nicaraguan University of Humanistic Studies (Uneh), the Paulo Freire University (UPF) and the Hispano-American University (Uhispam).
According to Medina, from outside Nicaragua “there is concern precisely about the emergence of authoritarian regimes that are targeting universities and are restricting university autonomy and academic freedom.”
He regretted, however, that a shameful silence has been maintained in Central America for a long time. Except for the Costa Rican universities, which have taken a more dignified position, which have presented resolutions that unfortunately have not been approved within the Central American Higher University Council, the CSUCA, which also maintains a silence that I think is shameful.
They legitimize confiscations prohibited by the Constitution
The expert also referred that the approval of the new “General Law for the Regulation and Control of Non-Profit Organizations”, which prohibits direct or indirect political proselytism and that organizations use their structure “to violate public order” or promote “destabilization campaigns” in Nicaragua, has the objective of “giving a legal framework to a series of arbitrariness that limit the freedom of action, of participation, of the citizenry in the affairs of the country”.
Medina criticized that for the approval of this regulation an alleged fight against terrorism and money laundering was adduced, when what is sought is to control the organizations that defend, accompany and promote rights and freedoms.
He affirmed that the regime has not been able to prove that any NGO has committed terrorism or money laundering, on the contrary, it has ordered them to close with absurd justifications and without real foundations.
He recalled that in the open case against the Violeta Barrios de Chamorro Foundation (FVBCh), in which the regime sentenced three workers and two former directors of that organization to between seven and thirteen years in prison, “nothing was proven and no other NGO has been shown anything that has to do with alleged money laundering.”
The Ortega regime has unleashed constant persecution against non-profit organizations, especially those dedicated to defending rights and promoting the exercise of democracy, rights and freedoms. In the last four years, from 2018 to March 2022, it ordered the cancellation of the legal status of 143 NGOs and confiscated the assets of at least half a dozen of those organizations.
The new law also empowers the State of Nicaragua to confiscate the assets of non-profit organizations, in clear violation of the Political Constitution of Nicaragua, which in its article 44 prohibits the “confiscation of assets.” In article 47 of the new legislation, it states that the State will keep the properties of the NGOs when the legal personality has been canceled for eight reasons, in which it was only excluded when the cancellation occurs due to “dissolution and liquidation”.
Medina reiterated that the legalization of confiscation, like the reforms to higher education laws that impose more control over universities, is “an apology for all these illegalities and arbitrariness that exist in the country.”
“We are getting closer to what is North Korea. We are heading there and that is what would await us if we let this ambition of total control of institutions and people continue to advance, ”he warned.
