Manuel Orozco, director of the Migration, Remittances and Development program at the Inter-American Dialogue: “Daniel Ortega had two main motivations—consistent with the single objective of prolonging his illegitimate stay in power for as long as a dictatorship can hold—for full monopoly of repression. First, the primary motivation was to minimize the ‘noise’ of international and domestic condemnation over the mistreatment and the criminalization of democracy by emptying the jail of the citizens and civic leaders, that way paving the way for a smoother rise to power of Rosario Murillo in the near future. The second motivation was part of the internal realignment the government has initiated to control dissent within the system. The regime is clear that economic and political capital is diminishing, and measures to compensate those limitations include purges, new clientelist measures and elimination of any source of discontent—pro-Ortega forces believed…”