Alberto Rubio
The until a few days ago Nicaraguan ambassador to Spain, Carlos Midence, has been appointed ambassador to Argentina, according to yesterday’s Official Gazette of the Republic of Nicaragua, La Gaceta, although the appointment was signed by President Daniel Ortega on March 16.
Midence, as reported by The Diplomat, was recalled by his government last March 10, citing “continuous pressures and interfering threats”, just before the Spanish Foreign Ministry communicated its withdrawal of credentials in application of the principle of reciprocity, since Ortega refused to accept the return of the Spanish ambassador, Mar Fernandez-Palacios.
In the more than 5 years that Midence headed the Nicaraguan embassy, the writer developed an intense promotional activity, based mainly on cultural events and economic meetings with almost all the autonomous communities.
In the same edition of La Gaceta nicaragüense, other agreements of personnel of the Department of Foreign Affairs are recorded. The most striking of these is the withering dismissal of the hitherto Permanent Representative of Nicaragua to the Organization of American States (OAS), Arturo McFields Yescas, a former journalist and personal friend of the Ortegas.
McFields caused a real political upheaval in Nicaragua on Wednesday when he harshly criticized Daniel Ortega’s regime during a live session of the OAS, in which he had to ask to be allowed to finish before the incredulity of the audience.
Those unvarnished criticisms are considered by some political scientists as the tip of the iceberg of an internal discontent within Sandinismo that was already brought to light by former Nicaraguan Supreme Court Justice Rafael Solís, who resigned in 2018. Solís was a key player in eliminating presidential term limits, which allowed Daniel Ortega’s reelection in 2011.
In both cases, it is a circumstance that both dissidents were people very close to the Ortega-Murillo marriage. McFields was the only journalist who showed the Ortega’s house in a television report, and Solis was the best man at the presidential couple’s wedding.
