In an interview with the Spanish newspaper The country, the founder and first Commander-in-Chief of the Sandinista Army, Humberto Ortegaspoke about the future of his brother, the dictator of Nicaragua, Daniel Ortega, who has been in power since 2007 and has intensified the repression against the Nicaraguan people since April 2018, but he also spoke about his sister-in-law, the deputy dictator, Rosario Murillo.
Humberto Ortega took advantage of his appearance to minimize his brother’s wife. He predicted little capacity for her to sustain a government without Daniel Ortega and downplayed the role she can play, even though Murillo herself is credited with the most lurid maneuvers to impose repression, crimes, and persecution against her critics.
Rosario Murillo “has the weight that Daniel Ortega wants to give it,” said the once-powerful Sandinista military chief and who is still suspected of having political influence over some Army chiefs, whom Rosario Murillo maintains with flattery and fear, with notable disdain, but not under control.
Regarding the possibility that Murillo is the one in charge of the government apparatus, Daniel Ortega’s brother insisted that the dictator “has publicly said, although it is not constitutional, that for him she is co-president. He is saying that he and she rule there. You don’t have to do a lot of research,” he said.
However, he stressed that despite the fact that the president wants to give it more importance than his spokesperson has. The fundamental man in command of Nicaragua is Daniel Ortega himself, “that is why I never mention anyone but him, because without Daniel Ortega there is no one who can sustain this situation in Nicaragua.”
«I always talk about Daniel Ortega, without trying to disrespect her —Rosario Murillo—, because he is responsible for what happens in Nicaragua. I cannot be seeing the lens through it, “said the former general.
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Thinking of a possible Nicaragua governed by Murillo, the vice president’s brother-in-law points out that it would be very difficult and complex. “So far she gives her all her strength and she has her right, but I find it very difficult to think of a situation with her alone in front of her.”
Calls for dialogue between the opposition and the dictatorship
Referring to the search for a way out of the crisis that Nicaragua is experiencing, Humberto Ortega affirmed that it is not possible for there to be a dialogue or negotiation between the opposition and the regime of their Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo, after both the dictator and his detractors they blame each other for the drift suffered by the country.
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As a kind of intercessor or “savior”, the brother of the dictator said that he has tried not to lament the situation that the country is going through “but to see how it never happens again and that Nicaragua does not collapse again.”
“There are some forces – from the opposition – that say that you cannot negotiate with a government that is criminal, that is accused of crimes against humanity (…) and the government also says that they are the ones who caused the situation in 2018 I do not see that there is another way but to seek the meeting again, “Ortega referred to The country.
Regarding whether Daniel Ortega is interested in establishing a dialogue to reestablish a democratic system, his brother said that “there are situations in which it is no longer a matter of continuing to impose what one wants, but rather what one should, even if they do not want to.” ».
He stressed that it is the head of state, —in this case his older brother— who must have the initiative to find a form of communication to generate a dialogue with the same opponents to whom he has denied space.
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In anticipation of the 2026 presidential elections, the retired general indicated that in order to seek dialogue, Ortega must “rectify all the excesses into which he has placed the opposition, because with it excluded there can be no agreement for the 2026 elections.” .
«If you do not rectify, it will be very difficult for you to continue, It will isolate itself and it will be difficult to govern. Here there are serious problems of all kinds, social, economic, unemployment, basic basket. He —Daniel Ortega— or the party wants to maintain the course that it has maintained until today, it is no longer possible, “he remarked.
“In Nicaragua there is no democracy”
Faced with the affirmation of the international media that among the problems that Nicaragua is experiencing is a lack of democracy, Humberto Ortega asserted that in the country “there is no democracy.”
«The possibility of having democracy in Nicaragua was born when Somoza fell and was legitimized with the political constitution of 1987. That agreement that we made with the Contras hating us, with the rifles still smoking, ours and theirs, where we had to release the prisoners who bombarded the cities, to the torturers who, in my case, killed a brother”, he recalled.
He pointed out that currently, there is a leadership —in charge of Daniel Ortega— “that came from those struggles, —but— that has strayed from the democratic path and that is marking an authoritarianism that is not correct.”
He also questioned the “disaster” of the position of political opponents whom he accuses of not wanting “any negotiation because they are waiting for the government to collapse completely and that it will collapse on its own.”
Need a truth commission
On April 18, five years after the social protests in Nicaragua, which left more than 300 murdered, according to the human rights organization, and that to date no paramilitary or officer has been tried, Ortega indicated that a commission is necessary of the truth, to investigate crimes not only today, but since the 80s.
“That is what you have to go to see in a negotiation. The practical thing would be to make a truth commission from the eighties to the present, because here there are those who believe that we all have to be judged, “he said.
“There are those who want to see Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo hanged at the stake. We’re not going to give that circus show. That gets us nowhere. I am not tolerating the Government or the State and their excesses,” he remarked.
Ortega assured that he was not a supporter of the ruling Sandinista Front, much less of any other political structure; However, he said that he has “private conversations with different figures from the opposition or the government, like Daniel himself, no longer as his brother, but as president.”
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Regarding the issue of the kidnapping and prosecution of Monsignor Rolando Alvarez, The businessman also stated that the prelate must be released and that “confronting the Church as it is doing (the FSLN) is a political mistake.”
«Confronting the Church, especially in Latin America, in Nicaragua, is a mistake. The Christian, Catholic feeling is very deep,” concluded the brother of the Nicaraguan dictator, who at the end of 2022, was visited by Daniel Ortega at his home, where he supposedly went for health reasons, however, many critics claim that the meeting was for mediation to achieve the release of political prisoners.
