Elections in Nicaragua: Who is Daniel Ortega?

Campaign "mute and deaf" in the elections of Nicaragua 3:22

(CNN) -

Daniel Ortega, four times president of Nicaragua, has remained the main candidate to win and obtain re-election in the next elections on November 7, after at least 37 opposition leaders were arrested, including seven candidates for The presidency.

After holding the position first between 1985 and 1990, and then between 2007 and 2012, between 2012 and 2017, and finally from 2017 to the present -after a constitutional reform that eliminated the limits to re-election for successive terms in Nicaragua-, the figure de Ortega has been associated with that of Nicaragua since the time of the Sandinista Revolution.

• Arrested opponents, sanctions and the reelection sought by Daniel Ortega: everything you need to know about the elections in Nicaragua

He has been re-elected twice and is seeking his third reelection and his fifth term in total, sharing the ballot with his wife Rosario Murillo -current vice president and candidate for reelection- for the United Nicaragua Triunfa Alliance, led by the Sandinista Front. of National Liberation (FSLN).

But the road to the next elections has been marked by the arrests of the main opposition leaders - who are accused of alleged crimes such as money laundering and carrying out acts against sovereignty - which has cast doubt on the legitimacy of the process, and the critical reaction of international organizations.

Daniel Ortega with his wife and vice president, Rosario Murillo, in a file image taken in Managua on October 13, 2018 (Credit: Inti Ocon / AFP / Getty Images).

All of the detainees, including presidential candidates, businessmen and activists, have rejected the charges against them.

International organizations, including the OAS and the UN, have also condemned the arrests and called for the release of opponents.

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The Nicaraguan government has yet to provide evidence regarding the allegations, Human Rights Watch has noted.

Ortega has said for his part that "the enemies of the revolution, the enemies of the people, are shouting that poor people, how is it possible that they are detained, imprisoned, processed".

The vice president and first lady of Nicaragua, Rosario Murillo, questioned the government's critics: "In how many countries and in how many organizations have we seen how people who run over the towns, looting, stealing, are taken to justice."

Beginnings in Sandinismo

Ortega was born in La Libertad Chontales, Nicaragua, on November 11, 1945. He studied Law at the Central American University, but dropped out to join Sandinismo, after which he spent seven years in prison.

In the 1970s, the FSLN began a campaign of armed struggle to overthrow the Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza, which it achieved in 1979.

In those years Ortega met Rosario Murillo in exile in Costa Rica in 1977. They married and had seven children.

Photograph taken on June 27, 1988 of Cuban President Fidel Castro (right) and Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega (left), during Ortega's arrival at the José Martí International Airport in Havana.

(Credit: TOMAS GARCIA / AFP via Getty Images)

After the triumph of the Sandinista Revolution, Nicaragua was embroiled in a civil war against rebels backed by the United States, the so-called "contras."

"At that time, much of the country was destroyed," says New York University professor Alastair Smith, author of "The Dictator's Handbook: Why Bad Behavior is Almost Always Good Politics." bad behavior is almost always good policy).

Compulsory military service was introduced and food was rationed amid an economic blockade ordered by Washington.

Ortega's first presidencies

In 1979, Ortega was coordinator of the Government Board of National Reconstruction, and then he won the presidential elections in 1984, elections in which the opposition nucleated in the Nicaraguan Democratic Coordinator did not participate, considering that there were no guarantees, according to the think tank. Cidob.

He governed until 1990, when he lost at the polls to Violeta Barrios.

Still influential in politics, he managed to come to power again in 2006, after nearly two decades of right-wing governments.

The Constitution prevented him from appearing in 2011, but "his control over the judicial class helped him to have that clause annulled on the grounds that his human rights would be violated," says Smith.

The newly re-elected president of Venezuela, Hugo Chávez (right), talks with the president-elect of Nicaragua, Daniel Ortega, on December 5, 2006. (Credit: JUAN BARRETO / AFP via Getty Images)

On November 6, he was elected with 63% of the votes.

He won 62 of the 90 seats in dispute, enough to reform the Magna Carta.

With a new image of a peaceful man, he proclaimed in his first government in the 21st century a "Christian, socialist and solidary" Nicaragua, in a predominantly Catholic country.

In this way he conjugated a conservative profile in moral terms.

He changed his green guerrilla shirt for others in light tones, and looked for credits and investments in the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and in Washington.

At the same time, he declared his loyalty and friendship to the president of Venezuela, Hugo Chávez, the Cuban Fidel Castro and the ousted Libyan leader, Moammar Gadhafi.

The 2018 protests

In April 2018, social protests broke out in Nicaragua, one of the countries with the least human development in Latin America, against the social security reform, which increased the employer and labor quota and created a new contribution for retirees.

The then president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and the president of Nicaragua Daniel Ortega on January 14, 2007 during a visit to the working-class neighborhood "Cuba Libre" in Managua, Nicaragua (Credit: MIGUEL ALVAREZ / AFP via Getty Images)

The violent mass demonstrations throughout the country were the first in the 11 years of Ortega's government so far, and they left hundreds of deaths and a climate of tension in the country.

Ortega considered at that time that the protests had been orchestrated by what he calls US imperialism with the support of local rights and that the deaths are the responsibility of opposition terrorist gangs using the same methods as in Venezuela.

Unlike this country, where protests against Chavismo were almost always led by former opponents of President Hugo Chávez, in Nicaragua there is a particular situation because some of the opposition leaders were fellow travelers of Ortega during the fight against the dictatorship of Somoza and held important positions in the Sandinista government between 1979 and 1990.

Several of them were very critical of Ortega for his policy of alliances with conservative parties, business entities, and especially with the Catholic Church that partnered with Ortega to - among other things - ban abortion.

International sanctions

The European Union introduced sanctions in October 2019 to address Nicaragua's deteriorating political and social situation, and on Monday announced that it had extended them until October 15, 2022. 

The trauma of being the daughter of a Nicaraguan political prisoner 1:42

They are aimed at individuals and entities responsible for violations or abuses of human rights or repression of civil society and the democratic opposition in Nicaragua, as well as individuals and entities whose actions undermined democracy or the rule of law.

They currently apply to 14 Nicaraguan politicians and officials, including Ortega's vice president and wife, Rosario Murillo.

While the United States Department of the Treasury imposed sanctions on the Nicaraguan attorney general, Ana Julia Guido Ochoa, the secretary of the Presidency for National Policies, Paul Oquist Kelley, and the National Rural Fund (Caruna).

The Nicaraguan government has not spoken out about this round of measures, but President Daniel Ortega has repeatedly stated that the sanctions are attacks on the country's sovereignty and constitute an act of interference in the internal affairs of Nicaragua.

Daniel Ortega