Carlos F. Chamorro

The vicious attack launched this July 19th by commander Daniel Ortega against the Catholic church’s Episcopal Conference bishops was intended to be the final blow to derail the country’s hope in the National Dialogue, but it’s destined to the most resounding failure.

On July 7, Daniel Ortega burned the last bridges that offered him the possibility of negotiating an exit from power in gradual steps and of advocating for his party to maintain some influence in the government institutions during a future democratic transition.

In the solitude of his bunker in El Carmen -the enclave of the State-Party-Family-, President Daniel Ortega took five days to “reflect” on the justice and democratization agenda and the road map for his departure from power that the bishops presented him in the name of the National Dialogue.

After having remained in power for eleven years, leading a corrupt regime that demolished the democratic institutions and concentrated all state powers under his control, Ortega had the opportunity to corroborate his supposed democratic convictions regarding civic struggle. He failed completely.

The preliminary report on the April killings in Nicaragua from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights is definitive in its findings regarding the dimensions of the horrors suffered by the victims of the repression. Its conclusions on the responsibilities of the State for excessive use of police and paramilitary violence are devastating.

Although dozens of suspects for these crimes have been identified by the population and the victims’ family members, and the proof has been displayed in the independent media and the social networks, not a single member of the paramilitary has been detained nor has any police officier been separated from their post in order to undergo an investigation…

The killings perpetrated by the paramilitary forces of the Ortega/Murillo regime and the riot squads of the National Police resulted in the worst bloodbath in the post-war history of Nicaragua.

The magnitude of the popular reaction came without warning, when a group of young university students and dozens of elderly called, on their own, a peaceful protest against the blow to the population’s finances.

The repression unleashed this week by the Ortega shock troops operating under police protection reveals the regime’s fear of social protest. Here are four key points as to why.

The era of false news, the manipulation of the truth and the imposition of so-called “alternative facts” as State policy, wasn’t invented by Donald Trump in the United States. In Nicaragua, it was inaugurated a decade ago, when President Daniel Ortega launched his first offensive against the independent press…