Daniel Ortega’s corrupt regime resorts to violence to stay in charge
AMONG Latin America’s handful of autocracies, that of Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua once stood out for its stability. Mr Ortega was the most prominent leader of the revolutionary Sandinista regime of the 1980s, but lost an election in 1990. He later forged a dirty deal with a conservative rival that let him return to power with just 38% of the vote in 2006, and has since clung to office by nobbling democratic institutions. At the last election in 2016, he banned the main opposition. Nicaragua thus joined Venezuela, the only two Latin American countries to have regressed from democracy to dictatorship.
Mr Ortega rules by combining left-wing rhetoric with mainly right-wing policies, letting the private sector and the Catholic church do what they like and avoiding quarrels with the United States. He has kept his political base among the poor thanks to roughly $5bn in Venezuelan aid. He has made his wife, Rosario Murillo, vice-president. Corruption has flourished. All this carries a whiff of the Somozas, the brutal, thieving dictators whom the Sandinistas overthrew in 1979. Nevertheless it has worked. The country, ravaged by civil war in the 1980s, has been at peace. The economy has grown strongly.
But on April 18th something snapped. After years of his government plundering the national pension pot, Mr Ortega imposed by decree a 5% cut in pensions and raised contributions. Furious citizens rioted (see article). Police and pro-regime thugs responded with clubs and bullets. Almost three dozen people were killed. The government silenced several television channels. A degree of calm returned only after Mr Ortega cancelled the decree.
Mr Ortega’s problems may have just begun. Everything indicates that the ruling couple have lost the consent of their people. It is often forgotten that authoritarian governments tend to depend even more on popularity than democratic ones do. Mr Ortega has neutered the institutions that might serve as shock absorbers against popular ire. In this predicament authoritarian rulers can negotiate, or dig in and tough it out. Which will Mr Ortega pick?
He has offered to talk to the private-business lobby and the church. They should insist on a broader dialogue. This cannot only be about pension reform. It should include, at the very least, an investigation into the recent deaths, an independent audit of the government’s accounts and of aid money, the restoration of political freedoms and the reform of the Ortega-nobbled electoral authority and supreme court.
Ortega family values
Unfortunately Mr Ortega is unlikely to go along with much of this. Aged 72, he appears to want to install Ms Murillo as his successor. The chances are that he cannot do that democratically. After several years of rapid growth, the economy has started to slow. The fiscal accounts are under pressure. Unlike his friend Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela, Mr Ortega has no oil. His economy depends on the confidence of investors and lenders. All this suggests harsher repression may not work.
In one sense, Mr Ortega is not alone. His fellow populist caudillos in Latin America are each in varying degrees of trouble. Having lost majority support, Mr Maduro abolished Venezuela’s parliament and is dragging his country to socioeconomic catastrophe. In Ecuador Rafael Correa lost control after he sponsored a successor who has adopted more moderate and democratic policies. In Bolivia Evo Morales may face electoral defeat if he insists on trying to prolong his more than a decade in power at an election in 2019. Sooner or later people tire of caudillos. Mr Ortega faces a stark choice: retreat while he still can, or risk plunging his country into far deeper turmoil.