The president of Nicaragua, Daniel Ortega, has dismantled nearly 200 Nicaraguan NGOs since December 2018, in the context of the crisis that the country is going through, in an attempt to silence the voices of the organizations that he cannot control and in his “obsession ” of remaining in power, valued the sociologist and feminist activist María Teresa Blandón.
“The closure of so many civil society organizations, in record time, is part of a deliberate strategy by the Ortega Murillo regime (presidential partner) to dismantle any form of citizen participation that is not under its control, that is, it is an attempt for dismantling citizens,” said the also director of the La Corriente Feminist Regional Program Association, one of the 50 NGOs banned on Wednesday.
In an interview with Efe, the sociologist and feminist who one day supported the Sandinista revolution said that “the Ortega Murillo regime, in its desire for totalitarian control, seems to her to be a danger to its permanence in power, the existence of organizations that They have their own priorities.”
Related note: Director of La Corriente: Cancellation of legal personality is a “strategy” to dismantle civil society
Therefore, he considered, they resort to “dismantling any form of citizen participation that is not under their control” in order to maintain absolute control” in Nicaragua.
“It cancels them because it cannot control them, because in its obsession with absolute control (it thinks that) whoever does not submit to its guidelines, to its mandates, has no right to exist,” he reasoned.
Seeks to reinforce “client control”
Blandón also argued that the Executive outlaws these NGOs to “reinforce the logic of patronage control with which this government has related to the people since its return to power 15 years ago.”
He noted that the NGOs have been closed down not necessarily for “being critical of the Ortega Murillo regime, although some were directly so, but it was enough that they were not under the control of the regime and that they were not willing to repeat the official discourse” to be annulled. .
Among the outlawed organizations, according to Blandón, are NGOs dedicated to community development “that resolved citizen demands where the State is not present or has not been present in a comprehensive and systematic way to meet the demands of the most discriminated groups.” , poor, and excluded”.
“It annuls them because it does not want any kind of competition in any field, because it does not want any form of participation that is not the one that is oriented in this logic in which the State is confused with a party and worse still with the interests of a single family, in this case the Ortega Murillo”, he considered.
Related note: Regime orders to remove the legal status of the CPDH and 24 other organizations
In addition, they cancel these NGOs “because they want people, and particularly those from the most discriminated sectors, to depend solely and exclusively on clientelistic policies, Ortega cancels NGOs outside his control for “obsession” with power, says an activist who runs the regime ”, he added.
“They resort to subterfuge”
In Blandón’s opinion, Ortega’s logic is to “reinforce absolute control, impose his own discourse, his own narrative, and prevent any form of autonomous organization of Nicaraguan citizens.”
Regarding the argument used by the Government to cancel the legal personality of the NGOs, the sociologist said that “the regime used this false narrative of accusing them all as equals or as coup plotters or money launderers” after the social outbreak of April 2018 , “and both accusations have absolutely no basis.”
Regarding the other argument that the NGOs did not present their documentation in order, Blandón described it as “a pretext, because there are many organizations, with documents in hand, that have demonstrated and have gone time and time again to the Ministry of the Interior to try to present their documentation and the Ministry of the Interior has refused to receive that documentation, that is, it is a trap.”
“And a government that resorts to these subterfuges cannot be a responsible or credible government, neither for the Nicaraguan citizenry nor for the international community,” he pointed out.
In the case of the NGO La Corriente, the feminist commented that it was illegal for denouncing, since Ortega returned to power in 2007, “the false rhetoric of the regime” and “the manipulation they have done with women, especially with that of the sectors poorest, and the lack of commitment to the rights of women”.
