MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Nicaragua is a “family dictatorship” claims former minister

Cardenal, priest, poet, former Minister of Culture

The Nicaraguan administration of President Daniel Ortega “is not left-leaning or Sandinista or revolutionary, it's imply a family dictatorship”, said Ernesto Cardenal, a Catholic priest and one of the country's most renowned poets.

Cardenal was reacting on Sunday to the Ortega administration decision to censor Nicaraguan novelist Sergio Ramirez Mercado who was not allowed to write the introduction of a poetry anthology from Carlos Martinez Rivas that the Spanish newspaper El Pais was planning to publish in its Culture Section next May. "This brutal censorship act is further evidence , for those overseas who don't know about it, that in Nicaragua we are living under a Fascist government", said Cardenal in a release to the international press. "There are many who have suffered aggressions from the government and I am also one of them, and I continue to be exposed to political persecution", added the Nicaraguan poet who on two occasions was proposed as a candidate for the Literature Nobel, 2005 and 2007. Cardenal, in his eighties, was condemned by a peoples' court in Nicaragua for allegedly insulting a German businessman and has had all his bank assets frozen. However he refused to accept the sentence arguing it was "unfair and illegal" and because it was a "direct revenge" from President Ortega and the First Lady Rosario Murillo. Cardenal who was Minister of Culture of the first Sandinista government, also headed by Ortega, was condemned to pay 1.025 US dollars for been injurious towards German businessman Immanuel Zerger. Apparently they have an ongoing long dispute over land possession. For refusing to pay the fine he had his bank accounts frozen, but given his age, 83, he was not sent to jail or house arrest. "Each barbarian action from the government couple takes us a step closer to the cliffs", said Cardenal whose poetry is world known. Since very young Cardenal fought against the US backed dictatorship of Anastasio Somoza and was a militant of the National Liberation Sandinista Front, FSLN, currently in office until 1995. Somoza collapsed when the administration of President Jimmy Carter refused to continue to support him. As Minister of Culture during the first Sandinista government he was publicly reprimanded (March 1983) by pope John Paul II during his visit to Nicaragua, for mixing religion and revolutionary politics. The images of the Pope pointing with his finger and Cardenal on his knees, travelled all over the world.