The Ortega-Murillo Regime Is the Virus

By Manuel Sandoval Cruz*

HAVANA TIMES – Nicaraguan history has taught us there are external factors outside the government’s will, that may affect it if they fail to take the required measures, even if these seem drastic. This was demonstrated by the Managua’s 1972 earthquake during the Somoza dictatorship; Hurricane Mitch in the Arnoldo Aleman period, and now the Covid-19 pandemic under the Ortega-Murillo dictatorship.

Today, Nicaragua is sunken in pain caused by death, exile, and prison. By the pain of living in a divided country with many fractures, and where finding common ground is becoming harder.

This Nicaragua of ‘disconnected archipelagos’, named metaphorically by Dr. Alejandro Serrano Caldera. A Nicaragua of expressions like ‘armaño’^[1] voiced by a resident when visited by Ortega militants who, as missionaries, come to the neighborhoods to talk about the pandemic without any regards for protection.

Nicaragua will be the focus of the region until the necessary measures are taken to stop the Covid-19.The silence of the tyrants can only be compared to the silence of Nazism and the crimes of the Holocaust; the silence of organized crime while plotting, and although all the hired killers know, no one speaks. It’s shameful that Salvadoran President Bukele expresses concern about Nicaragua in the face of such government irresponsibility.

Ortega-Murillo is the most dangerous part of the virus. It’s the highest expression of current criminality in Nicaragua. They are so Machiavellian that they promote massive spreading hotspots with public gatherings all over the country. It seems they want to reduce their own militancy and ‘disappear’ the proof of paramilitarism in the murders committed since April 19, 2018.

With these calls to take part in rallies under the phrase “Love in the time of the Coronavirus” they do not show any respect for the party members they have left, they do not respect life, because yesterday as today, they are enemies of life.

Viruses pass from one body to another and the symptoms are the same, with the difference being that it can be more deadly in one than in the other. The noxious in El Carmen (the presidential family’s bunker) does not only reside within the government, it extends to the private sector, and they share the irresponsibility, because both have the economy as their priority.

With these complicities we manage to understand why nobody calls on the public to stay at home, or why the closing of schools and other social distancing measures aren’t promoted.

Only the Episcopal Conference of Nicaragua has taken the issue of this pandemic seriously. Not even the opposition has echoed so loudly against the danger of Covid-19. It has paralyzed us all in fear, uncertainty and misinformation. We have been denied the right to know how many real cases there are. El Carmen’s silence is the denial of this pandemic, which has hit so many countries with a death toll only believable in a horror film.

In Nicaragua the people are alone in the face of this reality. The best prevention will be self-care and to take the measures we already know about. The Health System does not have the necessary funds to contain this pandemic. The reduction in the health budget in 2019 and 2020 anticipated the little importance the dictatorship gives to the health of Nicaraguans. There is neither the resources nor the seriousness to respond to Covid-19 in the government, and worse yet, nor the will.

If this attitude doesn’t change, I cannot imagine the consequences on such irresponsibility in the region. It seems we live in a parallel world, and that Rosario Murillo believes the country will be protected with the few metal ‘Trees of Life’ that are left. As the recently deceased poet Ernesto Cardenal said, ‘The whole country is ruled by a madwoman’.

*The author is a Nicaraguan columnist

^[1]  Expression meaning large penis in some countries of Latin America.