The National Assembly of Nicaragua unanimously approved the reform of the Constitution, proposed by the dictatorship, with which Daniel Ortega and his wife and vice president, Rosario Murillo, will henceforth be “co-presidents” and will have, formally, total control of the government.
The constitutional reform proposal, with which more than 100 articles have been modified, was presented on Wednesday, November 20, and was approved by the 91 deputies of the assembly on Friday the 22nd, just two days later, the newspaper reports. The Press.
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Among other measures, Ortega and Murillo will be “co-presidents” and coordinators of the judicial, electoral and legislative powers. They also extended his term as president from five to six years.
As pointed out BBCthe Ortega dictatorship has already amended the Constitution 12 times since 2007, when it returned to power and from which it has not left since then.
The dictatorship may also dismiss public officials who do not agree with the “fundamental principles” of the regime and further limits freedom of expression, if they transgress “the right of another person, of the community and the principles of security, peace and well-being established in the Constitution”.
Likewise, the red-and-black flag of the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) has become a national symbol and the “Voluntary Police” has been created.
La Prensa points out that various opponents “have criticized this new legal framework” with all the repressive actions and violations of human rights” by Ortega since 2007.
Martha Patricia Molina, author of the report Nicaragua: A persecuted Church? —which in its latest edition reports 870 attacks by the dictatorship against the Catholic Church in the Central American country between 2018 and 2024— recently explained to ACI Prensa that there are also religious themes in the reforms.
Article 14 now states that “the State is secular and ensures freedom of worship, faith and religious practices in strict separation of the State and the churches.” It also establishes that “under the protection of religion, no person or organization can carry out activities that violate public order” and that “religious organizations must remain free from all foreign control.”
For the lawyer and researcher, “the reforms propose a definitive break between the Pope, Supreme Pontiff of the Catholic Church and the Nicaraguan Catholic Church. With these reforms, a parallel church that is not in communion with the Pope can be created.”
In statements to The Pressthe Spanish lawyer Xosé Luis Pérez indicated that the second paragraph of article 14 is very “dangerous”, because even “50 people gathered in a church can be an attack against public order.
The Nicaraguan University Alliance (AUN) wrote on Friday in X: “ALERT! Ortega and Murillo have approved a package of constitutional reforms that They destroy the rule of law in Nicaragua. They turned the country into a one-party regime, where the opposition is criminalized and freedom persecuted. #SOSNicaragua #SandinismoEsTerrorismo.”
Walter Sánchez Silva
I have been a husband since 2008. My wife and I have three children here and one who went to heaven in 2023, before he was born. Since I joined ACI Prensa in 2005, I have had the opportunity to cover various events of the Catholic Church. Among them, the World Youth Days in Cologne, Madrid and Rio de Janeiro and the apostolic trips of Pope Benedict XVI to Mexico and of Pope Francis to South Korea. I have been sent to the Vatican to cover the Family synods, in 2015; of the Amazon, in 2019 and that of Synodality, in 2023. I closely follow the situation of the Catholic Church in Nicaragua, which suffers persecution from the dictatorship of Daniel Ortega, as well as current ecclesiastical events in the region.