Humberto Ortega is being kept prisoner for souring the climate around the dynastic succession that his sister-in-law and her accomplices have planned as a smooth process.
By Silvio Prado (Confidencial)
HAVANA TIMES -This article was originally going to be about the final act of the canal concession in Nicaragua. However, before I could finish perusing the laws involved amid Madrid’s spring fever, came the incredible news of the house detention of Humberto Ortega by order of his sister-in-law (also Big Sister) and with the complacent acceptance of his marvelous brother.
On the weekend of May 19, many of us saw or read the interview with the “Generalissimo.” [Humberto Ortega, founder and former head of the Nicaraguan Army]. After reading it, some said: “Bah, nothing new! More of his habitual ‘me-me,’ only this time with his nearly Argentine-size ego swollen still more.” (“If the great powers would listen to me.”)
However, the tantrums of his sister-in-law [Rosario Murillo] has transformed remarks of little novelty into a new crisis for the dictatorship. Another bungle, slip, major stumble; a new monstrosity from a regime that -far from the strength it tries to portray – reveals itself as sickly, so unwell that a simple sneeze from a man recovering from serious heart problems has set it atremble like a sheet of paper.
Judging from what can be seen, they’re shooting themselves in the foot. It’s what usually happens when the brain shrinks, and the liver takes its place.
What did Humberto say that hasn’t already been said in the last six years? That the Ortega camp is a dictatorial regime, that his brother is a zombie, that he could die any day, and – Ay yi yi! – there’s no one to succeed him. That neither his sister-in-law nor the nephew have credentials in the eyes of any of the power strata. Nothing new under the sun.
The frenzied overreaction of the Big Cheese (Murillo) has given the general’s remarks a transcendence that they maybe wouldn’t have had otherwise. Instead of his words, the accent has been put on who spoke them: the former head of the army, the strongman’s brother, and a former member of the National Directorate of the Sandinista Revolution.