Nicaragua has revamped its Ministry of Interior, with President Daniel Ortega pledging a stronger security apparatus that recalls the powerful and feared department that operated during the revolutionary government.
Under the restructuring Ortega announced on Wednesday, the ministry’s portfolio will now include the police, the prison system, firefighters and immigration offices.
“It is a step that gives us enormous strength and we once again have the two great instruments with which we defeated the counterrevolution: the army and the Ministry of the Interior,” Ortega said.
“We are now in a better position to carry out tasks that prevent the enemy from advancing their plans because they are always conspiring,” he added.
Ortega, a former Marxist firebrand sanctioned by the United States, indicated the new ministry would function much like the one during the Sandinista government he headed for a decade after ousting dictator Anastasio Somoza in 1979.
That secretive security apparatus was used in the bloody fight against US-backed Contra rebels in the 1980s and was dismantled and replaced with the Ministry of Government in 1990 after the election of president Violeta Barrios de Chamorro.
Ortega returned to office in 2007 and has been accused of growing authoritarianism, taking direct control of several key institutions, including the National Assembly, the Supreme Court and the Supreme Electoral Council.
The government in Managua has shuttered more than 3,000 associations, NGOs and unions in the wake of 2018 protests against Ortega’s government
Hundreds of critics have also been detained, including several who would have challenged Ortega in the 2021 presidential elections.
Earlier this year, 222 jailed government opponents were suddenly expelled to the United States and stripped of their citizenship.
President of the National Assembly Gustavo Porras said the changes to the Ministry of Interior will be approved Thursday in an extraordinary session.
