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The Nicaraguan Police admitted that they are keeping the president’s brother under guard in his house, a situation that they attributed to surveillance for health reasons, but which occurred shortly after Humberto Ortega said in an interview that the country would have free elections when President Daniel Ortega dies without successors.
In a joint statement on Tuesday, the Ministry of Health and the National Police confirmed the installation of “a Specialized Medical Care Unit to care for the ailments that have afflicted and continue to afflict General” Ortega, former head of the Nicaraguan Army.
The Police statement does not specify whether he is detained or under house arrest, but indicates that the president’s brother, who suffers from several heart ailments, was evaluated by personnel from the Ministry of Health and his “main cardiologist.”
The local press has reported that Humberto Ortega, 77, has been under virtual house arrest since Sunday, after an interview with the Argentine portal was published. Infobae in which he harshly criticized his brother’s government. The local newspaper The Press He reported that that day the police surrounded his residence, located southeast of Managua, and confiscated his mobile phones and computers.
Although the authorities have not confirmed or clarified the situation, it is the first time since Sunday that the Nicaraguan government has spoken out on the issue and admitted that they are monitoring it but citing health reasons.
According to the Police statement, Humberto Ortega is “stable in his condition as a coronary patient” and “other illnesses typical of his age and underlying illnesses.” Ortega himself acknowledged in the interview that he has had heart problems since 2000 when he underwent open heart surgery.
The controversial interview
Humberto Ortega said that his brother Daniel has no successors, so his death will create “a power vacuum” and a “situation of chaos” that will force the Army to intervene and call for a transition process with free elections.
On other occasions and in the face of his controversial statements and public criticism, Daniel Ortega, 78 years old and with more than 16 years in power, has called his brother a “traitor” and a “sell-out.”
“Without Daniel I find it very difficult for there to be two or three who get together. Much less one in particular, and more difficult in the family. Children who have not had the accumulation of a political struggle. Not even (dictator Anastasio) Somoza could establish his son,” Humberto Ortega told Infobae.
It refers to the fight that his brother led during the Sandinista Revolution of 1979 and that ended the more than 40-year dictatorship of the Somoza family that ruled Nicaragua from 1937 to 1979.
He added that “the only thing that can resolve this vacuum, and ensure that there is no anarchy and chaos in the country, is the Army coordinated with the National Police,” in order to “seek a way out in the short term, perhaps a year or “At least, to call for an electoral process, whether it is the one scheduled for 2026.”
Infobae He also consulted if Daniel Ortega’s wife, Vice President Rosario Murillo, could succeed the president in the event of his “definitive absence.” Humberto Ortega responded emphatically that “no one” is capable of replacing him.
According to former Sandinista government officials, Murillo has long-standing disagreements with his controversial brother-in-law.
Humberto Ortega did not respond to a request for comment from the Voice of America immediately about media reports about him.
How is the measure interpreted?
Nicaraguan analysts and dissidents consulted by the VOA They agree that the reason why Humberto Ortega’s statements caused annoyance in his brother’s government is because a person like him, with “historical representation”, dared to question something important for the future of Nicaragua once he was no longer Daniel Ortega is there.
“Humberto Ortega is a controversial character because he played a key and obvious role as one of the fervent defenders of the Sandinista Revolution and everything it meant in terms of human rights violations,” he told VOA Manuel Orozco, Nicaraguan political scientist at Inter-American Dialogue, a Washington-based think tank.
According to Orozco, Humberto Ortega after the electoral defeat of his brother, Daniel Ortega in 1990, when President Violeta Barrios de Chamorro triumphed, changed his position and became a dissident in the post-revolution period.
“As time goes by, Humberto Ortega distances himself more from his brother and maintains a confrontational position with his sister-in-law (Rosario Murillo), whom he recognizes as a politically ambitious and ethically nefarious person,” commented Orozco.
For her part, Mónica Baltodano, a Nicaraguan writer and historian who now lives in Costa Rica and who participated prominently in the Sandinista revolution at the time, commented that “Ortega’s brother was given de facto house arrest because he publicly questioned the dynastic succession of an authoritarian dictatorial power”.
The dynastic succession in Nicaragua has regained strength as President Ortega appoints important functions in the country, such as signing trade agreements to his son Lauren Ortega and Vice President Rosario Murillo.
Laureano Ortega, born in 1982, is the sixth child of the nine that the presidential binomial has and is perhaps the most notable. Although in theory he works in the State as the advisor for Investments, Trade and International Cooperation, his role seems to have more weight.
Baltodano considered that the current government was uncomfortable that Humberto Ortega had been direct in saying that neither Vice President Murillo, nor her children, nor anyone in the current power group can be successors when the president dies.
“If Daniel dies, they are lost and only uncertainty and the danger of chaos would remain,” he said.
Baltodano also highlights that the annoyance of the ruling party is related to Humberto’s statements where he recognizes the existence of “an authoritarian, dictatorial type of power,” which does not allow the exercise of democracy in Nicaragua.
Since the protests of the year 2018 that arose against Daniel Ortega and that led to a political crisis, the Sandinista administration is accused by human rights organizations of establishing “a dictatorship.”
Dora María Téllez, historian and researcher who works as an academic at Harvard University, also a dissident of President Ortega’s government, agrees with Baltodano in the annoyance caused by Humberto Ortega’s statements related to a possible succession in Nicaragua.
A “politically persecuted”
“What Humberto says is that neither Rosario Murillo nor his children are in the possibility or have the capacity to become successors if Daniel Ortega leaves the scene. I think that was simply not to the liking of any of them, of anyone.” in that family, because their intention is to become a dynastic family,” Téllez commented.
“If Daniel Ortega cannot exercise power or stops exercising it for some reason, what they aspire is for Rosario Murillo to continue, and for her to be followed by Laureano, and for Laureano to be followed by her son or another son (of the family). “The Ortega-Murillo claim is that of a dynastic family like that of the Somozas,” said Téllez, exiled in the United States.
Téllez notes that at this point “they have turned Humberto Ortega into a politically persecuted person.”
“The characteristics of a politically persecuted person already have them: siege at their home, removal and theft of their belongings; monitoring,” Téllez told the VOA.
“The Catholic Church has been politically persecuted, evangelical churches have been politically persecuted, journalists and the media have also been persecuted. In the conditions that Nicaragua is in, political persecution is a constant for the majority of Nicaraguans,” he concluded.
[Con información de The Associated Press]
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