A man walks past a Daniel Ortega mural in Managua.STRINGER / Reuters
First it was an interoceanic canal.
Daniel Ortega announced with great fanfare to the world that he would open Nicaragua in a canal with an investment of more than 40,000 million dollars that an obscure Chinese businessman would contribute to build a second commercial route in Central America, a canal larger than that of Panama, of which not a single stone has been laid.
Then he rolled his eyes into space.
The Sandinista announced the commission to build a satellite to a Chinese company, which would be baptized as Nicasat-1, at a cost of 346 million dollars.
It was never in orbit.
And now the Nicaraguan president joins the space race by announcing the creation of a "National Secretariat for Outer Space Affairs, the Moon and other Celestial Bodies" in one of the poorest and most backward countries on the continent.
His megalomania includes declaring the spatial autonomy of his country, as established in the document sent to the National Assembly for approval: "promote the development of space systems and the means, technology and infrastructure necessary for the consolidation and autonomy of this sector in Nicaragua ”.
The Central American country, plunged into a deep political and social crisis since 2018, when Ortega unleashed a brutal repression against the demonstrations calling for the end of his term, has accumulated three years of economic recession and, according to World Bank data, went from having a good rhythm growth of 4.6.
in 2017 to a contraction of -3.9% in 2019 and with a discouraging outlook for 2021. The same institution estimates that poverty increased by 15.1% in 2020, that is, 350,000 people have become impoverished.
With the violence of the Government to any critical voice, galloping unemployment, the hit of hurricanes Iota and Eta and the ravages of the Covid-19 pandemic (whose lethality Ortega denied), Nicaraguans fight day by day to survive in an economy of misery, but in El Carmen, the bunker in Managua of Daniel Ortega and his wife and vice president Rosario Murillo, they dream big.
And it is thus that the new space secretariat will have among its functions "to promote the development of space activities to expand the capacities of the country, in the educational, industrial, scientific and technological branches in this matter".
The news of the creation of this office has surprised Nicaraguan academics, who view Ortega's new cosmic ambitions with suspicion.
"We don't even have an education program related to space sciences in our schools, we don't have institutions, observatories or anything like that," Jaime Incer Barquero, the leading Nicaraguan scientist, told Confidencial magazine, one of the media attacked by Ortega, whose writing was confiscated in 2018. "We are all surprised, we do not know what the reason is, what capacity we have," wonders the academic, one of the voices most critical of Ortega's canal project.
As Nicaragua sinks into poverty, Ortega tries to give an image of prosperity and progress thanks to what he calls his “revolutionary” project: an autocratic system, in which he and his family control the institutions of the State, the media and family businesses that suck up state resources.
Isolated by the international community, with sanctions imposed on members of the government leadership by the United States and the European Union, the regime tries to stay afloat by increasing taxes and charges for services such as tests to detect covid-19, at a cost of 150 dollars and necessary to leave the country.
Ortega has also made the Assembly, which he controls, pass a law that classifies civil society organizations that receive international funds as "foreign agents."
The regulation establishes fines of up to half a million dollars for organizations that refuse to register on the black list created by the Ministry of the Interior (Interior).
After the failed interoceanic canal and the satellite that was never in orbit, it remains to be seen what scientific advances the new secretariat for space affairs achieves.
Nicaraguans are no longer surprised by the megalomania of Ortega, a president who seems increasingly remote from reality.
Félix Maradiaga, one of the most critical voices against the Managua regime, defined it perfectly on Twitter: “The Ortega-Murillos live on the moon!
While the earthly problems of unemployment, insecurity and crime suffocate the people, the Ortega-Murillos create a Secretariat for extraterrestrial affairs.
A democratic government capable of addressing the nation's problems is urgently needed! "