Interior Ministry’s Return in Nicaragua Sparks Trepidation
Analysts believe that restoring the extinct Interior Ministry of the eighties is another step towards the return of the problems of that decade.
HAVANA TIMES – To Nicaraguan critics, the return of the Interior Ministry that Daniel Ortega announced last week implies the consolidation of the police state. These opposition members believe the Ministry will exercise a role of social control, spying and repression against any manifestation of government opposition, as took place during the eighties when the Ministry of the Interior originally functioned under the FSLN.
Following the fall of the Somoza dictatorship in 1979, Nicaragua passed into the hands of the Sandinista guerrilla who had conquered power through an armed, popular insurrection. The new government entered with a plan for economic and social transformation, but also with a new militarized State. Within a few years the government found itself under increasing pressure from the US under Ronald Reagan, including the organization and financing of a counterrevolutionary army based in Honduras. The Sandinista government reacted with ever increasing control, including a State Security apparatus coordinated by the Ministry of the Interior, or MINT.
In 1990, the Sandinista government held open elections and were shocked by their loss to Violeta Barrios de Chamorro, who concluded the ongoing peace process. Her new government changed some functions of the Ministry of the Interior and renamed it the Ministry of Governance.
On December 27th, thirty-four years later, Daniel Ortega – who doesn’t disguise his nostalgia for the revolutionary Sandinista years – announced that the Ministry of Governance will once more be called the Ministry of the Interior. According to him, the aim is to “return to the Sandinista roots,” and free the police from Ministry of Governance control. Immediately upon his announcement, Ortega ordered the National Assembly to approve a law establishing the functions and structure of the born again Ministry. His docile congress complied in an “urgent” session on December 29.
Exiled political analyst Felix Maradiaga recalls former MINT persecution
Felix Maradiaga is a former secretary in Nicaragua’s Defense Ministry (2004.2006), and a 2021 presidential hopeful who was imprisoned by Ortega and eventually released and banished along with 221 other political prisoners. He fears that the regime intends more than just a symbolic name change by suppressing the name “Ministry of Governance” established during Violeta Barrios’ term in office. To Maradiaga this “revives dangerous concepts used during the eighties to justify grave violations to human rights and the police state that prevailed during those years.”
“During the eighties, the Sandinista government defined internal security from an ideological and party perspective, where any person or organization opposed to the Sandinista Front was viewed as a threat to the country. That was the principal role of organs like the feared State Security, for example, during that era,” Maradiaga recalled.
“At the same time, the legal framework used during that first Sandinista regime tagged any person or institution that disagreed with the way the FSLN National Directorate exercised power as a foreign agent or a counterrevolutionary,” the political analyst added.
During the eighties, the Interior Ministry was led by Tomas Borge, one of the Sandinista Front’s founders. He was accused of imposing a system of internal espionage, and of persecuting those who were considered “enemies of the revolution,” including members of the Catholic Church. Borge was also accused of having ordered the assassination of 37 political prisoners and of conducting a witch hunt against the Miskito indigenous people on Nicaragua’s Caribbean coast. He himself always denied these allegations.
De facto policies now codified as laws
In Maradiaga’s view, there’s nothing new in the provisions of the hastily passed “Law of the Ministry of the Interior.” For years the Ortega-Murillo regime has been implementing those measures, although they hadn’t been codified as law.
He pointed out that the new law reestablishes the Interior Ministry’s role in guaranteeing compliance with the Foreign ‘Agents Law, effectively transforming the Ministry into a secret police force, as existed in the eighties.
“Under the logic that any Nicaraguan citizen could be an agent of a foreign power, the Ministry of the Interior and its repressive organs will treat those people as … something like a public enemy of the State. A vision that’s without a doubt Stalinist,” the political figure sustained.
The difference, Maradiaga noted, is that from now on it’s been “legalized” that “anyone who doesn’t define himself as a Sandinista is a potential enemy of the revolution, and therefore runs the risk of being subject to the repressive measures of the Ministry of the Interior and its organs at any moment.”
To Maradiaga, all this is “one more step towards the dark night” experienced by opponents in the eighties, under the arbitrary controls of the Sandinista regime.
Law dangerously ambiguous
Article 5, paragraph b of the new law establishes that the Ministry of the Interior exists to “neutralize and end any activity aimed at undermining the constitutional order and the institutions of the country, established by the revolution.”
A former official of the Ministry of Governance, who spoke with LA PRENSA on condition of anonymity, pointed out that the phrasing of this law was dangerously ambiguous. “‘The Ministry of the Interior exists to protect the revolution as a source of constitutional order,’ leaves it to the discretion of the police authorities to define what ‘protecting the constitutional order’ comprises.”
“The revolutionary institutions could be anything that occurs to the leaders of the supposed revolution,” the source stated. He added that this law is a complement to other recently approved legislation “that establishes the hierarchy of ranks in the general directorate of the Ministry of Governance.” That law establishes that the “Ministry of Governance [now Ministry of the Interior] and all of its bodies form an integral part of the National Police.” This means that the Nicaraguan Firefighters, the General Administration, the Directorate of Immigration and Foreign affairs, the National Penitentiary System and other branches will all be under the orders of the police authorities.
The former Governance Ministry official stated that these laws confirm the Ortega regime as a police state, where all the different organs share the aim of keeping watch over and repressing any dissent.
“The entire Ministry of the Interior is going to be at the service of the repression. There’s no longer any specialization – firefighters, immigration authorities, administrators, etc. – but instead you’re probably going to see the administrative, accounting, secretarial staff of each agency performing repressive functions if the Ministry of the Interior authorities so require, or the chief of police, Daniel Ortega, because now they’re all police,” the source explained.
Different usage of the two terms
Political analyst Eliseo Núñez noted that the term “Ministry of Governance” is used more in democratic countries, to confirm the exercise of governance, while “Ministry of the Interior” refers to an entity to maintain order and security. That doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a negative institution, but rather indicates the main function assigned to it.
“There are democratic countries that have a Ministry of the Interior. However, they have an enormous democratic institutional framework behind them, which allows citizens to defend themselves against abuses,” affirmed the political analyst.
Núñez agreed with the former Ministry of Governance official that the new reforms, “militarize everything within the Ministry of the Interior” and give priority to the Police over all civilian officials.
“All this indicates the imposition of a military scheme,” concluded Nuñez.