AA
Share
Over the past three months, two historic figures of the Sandinista National Liberation Front—the former FSLN National Directorate member Bayardo Arce and retired General Álvaro Baltodano—have been purged by Daniel Ortega’s wife and “co-president,” Rosario Murillo, and are now in prison. A third, former intelligence agent and national security advisor Néstor Moncada Lau, known as the “guardian of the dictatorship’s secrets,” is also detained on Murillo’s orders.
In fact, since Ortega returned to power in January 2007, Murillo has overseen the political decapitation of those closest and most loyal to him, gradually replacing them with her own loyalists and consolidating her dominance within the regime’s inner circle.
The first to fall from grace was Dionisio “Nicho” Marenco, mayor of Managua from 2004 to 2008, a key political operator for Ortega while he was in the opposition. He was also the architect of the opening of economic relations with Hugo Chávez’s Venezuela, which later became a pillar of Ortega’s regime. In November 2007, Murillo labeled Marenco a “traitor” for criticizing aspects of presidential management, and after leaving office, he retired from public life.
The same fate befell retired Colonel Lenin Cerna, a former prison companion of Daniel Ortega in the 1970s and former director of the General Directorate of State Security during the revolutionary government in the 1980s. After retiring from the army in 1999, Cerna was appointed Secretary of Organization of the FSLN in the opposition and continued in that role once the party returned to government. In 2011, he was removed from his position and expelled from the FSLN Secretariat at El Carmen, the headquarters of the party-state-family, on Murillo’s orders.
During Ortega’s first two terms, First Lady Rosario Murillo officially held only the largely ceremonial role of coordinator of the nonexistent “Council of Communication and Citizenship,” tasked with controlling the media. In practice, however, she quickly gained dominant political influence.
After the 2016 presidential election, Murillo became Daniel Ortega’s vice president, placing herself in the constitutional line of succession. The April 2018 protests challenged Ortega’s grip on power, but the regime responded with brutal police and paramilitary repression that left over 350 dead, thousands detained, and established a police state that remains in place.
In November 2021, Ortega and Murillo were re-elected in elections without any political competition, with all seven opposition presidential aspiring candidates jailed and the sole opposition party outlawed.
Rosario Murillo’s dynastic succession has advanced by de facto means as Daniel Ortega’s health declines, with the regime consolidating power through an increasingly authoritarian radicalization. The political purges across the state, party, police, and military reflect Murillo’s paranoia and insecurity, as well as her urgent drive to place cadres loyal to her—and not to Ortega—into the regime’s chain of command.
In November 2022, General Commissioner Adolfo Marenco, director of the National Police’s intelligence and investigations, was removed and arrested. In February 2023, former Vice President and ex-army chief Omar Halleslevens was ousted from his offices.
In October 2023, Murillo carried out a major purge of the Supreme Court of Justice, beginning with the de facto removal of CSJ President Alba Luz Ramos and continuing with a sweeping dismissal of judges, magistrates, and more than 1,000 court officials.
On May 19, 2024, Humberto Ortega Saavedra, Daniel Ortega’s brother, former member of the FSLN National Directorate, and ex-commander of the Sandinista Popular Army, told Infobae that in Ortega’s absence “an election should be called,” as there were no “successors in power.” That same night, police raided his home and placed him under de facto house arrest. Ortega would die four months later, isolated in a military hospital, having declared himself a “political prisoner.”
In June 2024, Finance Minister Iván Acosta—considered the state’s “manager” and previously loyal to Ortega—fell from favor, accused of “unauthorized corruption.”
The year 2025 began with the fall of Commissioner General Horacio Rocha, “minister advisor on security issues”, ironically the executor of Murillo’s earlier purges against police officer Dionisio Marenco, magistrate Ramos, and retired General Humberto Ortega, among others.
In February 2025, a new Constitution came into effect, designed as a tailor-made framework for Rosario Murillo. It established the figure of a “co-presidency,” with a “co-president” and a “co-presidentess,” legally securing Murillo’s succession in the event of Ortega’s absence, though the political succession remains unsettled.
The purge of Ortega’s last loyalists—including retired General Álvaro Baltodano, secretly sentenced in prison for “treason against the homeland,” and presidential economic advisor Bayardo Arce, who, alongside Baltodano, had been the main operator of Ortega’s alliance with major private-sector business leaders from 2009 to 2018—has sown unease and uncertainty among the “historic Sandinistas.”
“Rosario Murillo’s guillotine could fall on anyone,” dozens of Sandinistas and public officials told Confidencial.digital, speaking from exile under protection of their identities.
Rosario Murillo is poised to inherit Daniel Ortega’s power, but the deep unrest caused by the purge within the regime’s own ranks raises serious questions about the political viability of a dynastic succession.
*This article was originally published in Radar Latam 360.
