Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega was yesterday under pressure from widespread street unrest despite backing down on a contentious pension reform plan that triggered days of violence in which at least 25 people were killed.
Students leading the protests vowed to keep up their demonstrations until the 72-year-old leader and his wife and Vice-President Rosario Murillo are ousted.
The deteriorating situation prompted US authorities to order family members of American government personnel in Nicaragua to leave the country.
The Central American nation’s main private business association — an ally of Ortega during his 11 years in power — said it would go ahead with an anti-government march.
On Sunday, Ortega sought to placate popular fury, announcing he was revoking the pension reform plan that would have increased both employer and employee contributions and reduced benefits, in an IMF-backed bid to cap a rising $76mn deficit at the Nicaraguan Social Security Institute (INSS).The increases were the spark that ignited student protests last Wednesday that soon spread to other sectors of Nicaraguan society.
“The protests are no longer just for the INSS, it is against a government that denies us freedom of expression, freedom of the press and to demonstrate peacefully,” 26-year-old political science student Clifford Ramirez said. “We believe there is no longer space for dialogue,” he added.
Student protesters won support in neighbourhoods where residents came out to bang kitchen pots, and from workers and retirees angered by government corruption and the deterioration in their living conditions.
The protests intensified over the weekend as demonstrators erected barricades of burning tires in the streets of the capital Managua, while mobs ransacked shops in various parts of the city.
Ortega responded with a crackdown that saw the army deployed, independent media muzzled, journalists assaulted and pro-government demonstrators mobilised to counter the protests.
Protesters said the security forces used live fire against them.
A doctor treating those wounded in the clashes, Eyel Almanza, said in an interview that police officers were resorting to deadly force. “The wounds suffered by students have been from firearms,” he said.
The capital’s streets were largely empty yesterday. Many offices reported low employee attendance.
Ortega, a former Sandinista guerrilla who is allied to Venezuela and Russia, has compared the protesters to gang members who spread terror in Nicaragua’s Latin American neighbours.
The unexpected wave of violence in an otherwise relatively tightly controlled country caused international outrage and concern, with the US, the European Union and Pope Francis all calling for calm.
The auxiliary bishop for Managua, Silvio Baez, said on Twitter that “I don’t see any conditions for dialogue with Nicaragua’s government.”
He called for a halt to the “repression,” the freeing of youths arrested and the lifting of a broadcast ban imposed on an independent TV station.
Other groups also demanded Ortega change tack.
“We demand that the Nicaraguan government cease the brutal attacks against the demonstrators and the civilian population,” the Nicaraguan Center for Human Rights said in a joint statement with the International Federation for Human Rights.