The crisis in Nicaragua in four key questions

The Central American government is cracking down on opponents who demand the departure of President Daniel Ortega. The city of Masaya is the epicenter of the protest. Explanations.
  

More than 280 dead and 2,000 wounded. The protest that has been shaking up since mid-April the poorest country in Central America, Nicaragua, is violently repressed. In power since 2006, after having led the country for 10 years, President Daniel Ortega, 72, refuses to advance the elections while pro-government forces badault rebel towns and neighborhoods.

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While a dialogue between power and opposition under the aegis of the Catholic Church is born and unravels, the diplomatic pressure the president and his wife, Rosario Murillo, is growing. She is vice-president. The UN, Europe and 13 Latin American countries are calling for an end to violence. Update on the situation.

• Why this challenge?

On April 18, on the recommendation of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the government presented a pension reform project that raises contributions and lowers pensions by 5%. This project triggered student-initiated events in several cities. On April 22, Daniel Ortega renounced the reform, while the wave of protests killed 25 people in five days. This withdrawal did not calm the anger, and on April 23, tens of thousands of people, employees, students, peasants and entrepreneurs, demonstrated in Managua, capital of the country, to denounce the repression.

Since then, the murderous sequences are linked together. On Sunday, six civilians, including two minors, and four policemen were killed in joint police and paramilitary operations in and around Masaya, the main rebel city. One resident, Alvaro Gomez, mentioned "AK-47 armed police auxiliaries and machine guns".

On Saturday, an attack by pro-government forces against a church in the city of Managua in which 200 students retreated for 20 hours left two dead. According to a student, the paramilitaries were equipped with AK47 badault rifles, sniper rifles and grenades in front of "homemade mortars and barricades".

• What does the opposition want?

Like the protesters, the Catholic Church called on the president to hold an early general election in March 2019 instead of the end of 2021, the end of his term. Daniel Ortega took the reins of the country on July 19, 1979. The Sandinista revolution he led had just overthrown the dictator Anastasio Somoza.

Beaten in the polls in 1990, he regained the presidential seat in 2006 and obtained from the Supreme Court, mostly Sandinist, the authorization to run for a second consecutive term. In 2014, he had the Constitution amended to obtain a new mandate before being elected in the November 2016 presidential election, whose main opposition parties were left out.

• What Policy Leads Daniel Ortega?

In his first term, the leader applied a program inspired by the Soviet Union, with the stateization of the economy, nationalizations, expropriations and literacy, attracting hatred of United States who imposed a blockade on the country. Over time, it has metamorphosed, abandoning the Marxism of its beginnings for a more pragmatic management of the power, until scrupulously applying the recommendations of the IMF. As a well-rounded tuner, he has managed to tame the business community, rebadure international organizations, and swear allegiance to Venezuelan Hugo Chavez, whose petro-dollars and in-kind donations fuel the government's social programs.

"In the 1980s, Ortega was part of a project of revolutionary change, now it is a capitalist lover of power, who is dedicated to strengthening his privileges and his fortune, "told the AFP the former guerrilla Monica Baltodano, who turned his back on the Sandinista Liberation Front 2000.

• Is dialogue possible?

A dialogue between the president and the opposition, under the auspices of the Catholic Church, was opened on May 16 and then interrupted several times. Failing agreement on the democratization of the regime, the church suspended dialogue after a week, before the government and opposition agreed to resume talks on May 28.

Evidence of the fragility of this dialogue, the Church announced its resumption on July 6 before questioning it two days later after the death of 14 people, including members of the police, during an incursion of pro-government forces in the south-east of the country.

On Monday, 13 Latin American countries demanded "the immediate cessation of acts of violence" and urged the authorities to "reactivate the national dialogue".