section_path: Criticisms and concerns
section_name: Criticisms and concerns
paragraph_text: Criticisms and concerns
  
  Ortega's second presidency has been subject to much criticism and accusations of his becoming a strongman. The 2018 protests have been pointed to as being symbolic of these tensions. In 2018, Frances Robles wrote in The New York Times that the "many Ortega adult children manage everything from gasoline distribution to television stations" in Nicaragua.
  
  In the months preceding the November 2021 Nicaraguan general election, Ortega's government arrested many prominent opposition members. As of 23 July, 26 opposition leaders have been imprisoned.
  
  On 24 March 2022, the ambassador Arturo McFields, condemned the Ortega government and requested the release of political prisoners, alluding that the government people were "tired of dictatorship" and that it was not easy to denounce it. As a result, he was dismissed.
  
  The American lawyer Paul Reichler also left his position as representative due to "moral conscience", who felt that the president "was no longer the Daniel Ortega whom he respected so much and served with so much pride". Reichler found it inconceivable that someone like Ortega would have mercilessly suppressed peaceful demonstrations and imprisoned his former colleagues in inhumane conditions, and accused him of "murdering" a general by withholding medical treatment. This figure of American origin served as Nicaragua's international legal adviser before the International Court of Justice, when Managua denounced the United States for financing the counterrevolution, winning the case.
  
  The Ortega administration also ordered the closure of the Nicaraguan Language Academy for failing to register as a "foreign agent" ratified by the Sandinista parliament with the favorable vote of 75 deputies of the ruling FSLN.