Health : Escarnio and vulnerability
It is a mockery – cruel mockery, the purpose of which is to humiliate and despise – that while the dictatorship frees drug traffickers, it will keep several dozen political prisoners incarcerated. The derision or demeaning mockery is greater, when the alleged reason for releasing drug traffickers is Mother’s Month, and two years ago, exactly on Mother’s Day, a peaceful demonstration was massacred, and for the mothers of those victim prisoners from political repression, the same benefit is not granted to criminals.
Until the 2018 massacre, there was a sort of national and international complacency with the Ortega regime, while he familiarly “privatized” the FSLN and constituted a single-party regime, with some subordinate political parties. This is what a recent editorial in LA PRENSA refers to when it points out that “every dictatorship —but above all a totalitarian orientation, like that of Nicaragua—, imposes its own unique thinking”.
That was Ortega’s claim, unique thought, and also familiar and dynastic. The apparent paralysis and lack of coordination that exists in the Ministry of Health (Minsa), always of course in the denial of the pandemic, is because everything depends on Carmen, even the statements they read from the Minsa, or the repression of doctors and nurses. But the complacency with the Ortega regime changed radically as a result of the massacre, and the reports and supporting documentation made by various international human rights organizations, particularly the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), the Interdisciplinary Group of Experts Independientes (GIEI) and the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (Oacnudh).
From complacency it went to national and international outrage, and from outrage to Ortega’s rejection, isolation and sanctions. And the regime’s attitude to the pandemic only increases that outrage, rejection and isolation, even more so by releasing drug traffickers. That correlation that isolates and rejects Ortega is unimaginable that it changes, and it will continue no matter the changes of government in the United States, Latin America or any European country. Nor will the correlation of national forces change, because the entire cost of the pandemic lies with Nicaraguans and their organizations, companies, farms, and businesses, and the virus does not distinguish between social classes and political affiliations to get sick and kill.
Ortega’s greater national and international isolation, although he presumes otherwise, makes him more vulnerable to pressure and sanctions. In these circumstances, the peaceful way out of the dictatorship, including elections, as long as they are in appropriate conditions, since the opposition would not accept them and the international community would not tolerate them either, more likely than before.
The author is an economist.
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