Puerto Rican Evangelist in Nicaragua to Support Ortega

HAVANA TIMES – After their apparent falling out with the Nicaraguan Catholic bishops trying to mediate a now suspended national dialogue between a student led Civic Alliance and the government, president Daniel Ortega and his wife Rosario Murillo have brought in an evangelical preacher from Puerto Rico to help their cause to remain in power.

Puerto Rican preacher Jorge Raschke, who has publicly expressed his support for Ortega, called a massive worship on Sunday in the capital Managua to help seek a “peaceful solution” to the crisis in the country, reported dpa news.

The official press published photos of Raschke posing with Ortega and his wife, Vice President Rosario Murillo, after his arrival in Managua, where he gave statements to the media related to the government. The preacher said he saw Murillo cry because of the crisis in the country.

“I’ll be waiting for you in the Plaza de la Revolution to run off the forces of evil,” Raschke said in his invitation to the public, after expressing his support for Ortega and his rejection of the “barricades” installed in the country by demonstrators demanding the president resign.

“If today this government was to resign, to leave, who will govern? If there are elections (before those planned for 2021), whom are they going to put up?” He asked.

Raschke said that the social protests “violate the rights of the people” and harsly criticized the Catholic Episcopal Conference that serves as mediator in a national dialogue, currently suspended, because “I do not hear you call for peace”, which from his perspective means letting Ortega and Murillo remain in power.

In addition, he urged the Catholic bishops to “remove all those priests” he saw “with white cassocks with the population in demonstrations,” because “that is not the order of Christianity.”

Nonetheless, the preacher assured that the ritual in the Plaza de la Revolution, which holds some 80,000 people, will not be “a rally for or against the government” but “a meeting to begin the healing and seek a peaceful solution” to the conflict that Nicaragua is experiencing.

For its part, the government portal “El 19digital” indicated that the evangelist, president of a church called Clamor de Dios Internacional, will give “a prophetic message (of) repentance, humiliation, restoration of peace and values to save the homeland.”

This is Raschke’s second visit to Nicaragua. The first was in 1990, when Ortega lost power in the elections against Violeta Chamorro, after ruling the country for 10 years.

The crisis in Nicaragua began with a protest by students for a reform of Social Security, but it worsened after the violent action of the Police and paramilitary forces. The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) records 127 deaths and more than 1,200 wounded, but the Government only recognizes 42 deaths.