Although the regime has frustrated all attempts to end the crisis, citizens continue yearning for justice and democracy.
HAVANA TIMES – Six years have passed since the Nicaraguan social explosion of 2018, calling for justice, freedom, and democracy. In the interval, there’ve been three frustrated attempts to find a peaceful solution to the crisis.
During the first years of the crisis, the organized opposition, composed of different social sectors, made repeated attempted to sit down and negotiate agreements with the Ortega-Murillo regime, in demand of free elections and a transition towards democracy.
In 2018 and 2019, the Civic Alliance for Justice and Democracy was a central participant in two such attempts at dialogue with the dictatorship. The first dialogue was suspended with no results; in the second, the regime signed agreements but later refused to fulfill them, or only partially complied with them.
In 2021, with general elections approaching, the opposition prepared to demand and participate in free, transparent, and monitored elections. The regime responded by imprisoning the main opposition presidential candidates, as well as civic leaders, human rights defenders, former diplomats and journalists. It would eventually banish these leaders and strip them of their Nicaraguan citizenship, while at the same time cementing their own power by radicalizing their authoritarianism.
On April 17, 2024, Dr. Ernesto Medina, former rector of the Americana University in Managua and of the National Autonomous University of Nicaragua in Leon, joined Dr. Azhalea Solis, specialist in Constitutional law, and Max Jerez, previously a youth representative in the Civic Alliance for a joint interview on the internet news program Esta Noche. All of them continue to believe in the mechanisms of dialogue and free elections as the only viable way out of Nicaragua’s current crisis.
During the interview, Medina, Solis and Jerez reflected back on the lessons learned from the previous failed attempts at dialogue. They reaffirmed their hopes in the continued citizen demand for justice and democracy in Nicaragua. “Every year, the dictatorship recalls what happened that April, because they live with the permanent ghost of the massive 2018 civic rebellion that nearly toppled them from power and that continues as a latent force for change,” Max Jerez summarizes.
Lessons from the National Dialogue
Max, in May 2018, you represented the student movement which was in the streets and occupied universities. What were your expectations when you arrived for the first session of the National Dialogue that month? What lessons did you learn during those days?
Max Jerez: Our principal intention was to bring to the dialogue table the demands of the general public – those in the universities and the people demonstrating in the streets.
We had the opportunity to address Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo face to face and tell them exactly what people in the street were asking for. That moment marked a pinnacle in the history of the April Civic Rebellion, and in Nicaraguan history as well. To have the opportunity to tell the dictator to his face that he must stop the repression, that he must go, and that the Nicaraguan people were tired of his abuses and arbitrary actions.
There are those who suggest that the message Lesther Aleman gave Daniel Ortega about the student movements’ demands during the opening of a dialogue being televised nationally, was a grave political error. Do you think the regime could possibly have offered a different response or readiness for change at the dialogue [if this hadn’t occurred]?
Azahalea Solis: The Episcopal Conference had the wisdom to formulate a conversation with a government where a willingness to dialogue didn’t exist. That must be acknowledged, before critiquing anything that happened that May (2018).
Once all the sectors were seated, we decided that what we were going to present at the dialogue table was what was being shouted on the streets, which was the demand for justice and democracy. The other thing we determined is that the dialogue would be political and not by sectors, because we were used to the dictatorship’s trap of placing us in different camps, so that we’d fight amongst ourselves.
Whether it should have been broadcast