Her achievements as a Sandinista guerrilla commander 30 years ago earned her a place in the pantheon of Nicaragua’s revolutionary heroes. But while thousands will flood the streets of Managua tomorrow to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the Sandinista victory over the dictator Anastasio Somoza, Dora Maria Téllez will stay away.

Ms Téllez is one of a growing number of Sandinistas who have broken with the government of Daniel Ortega as, they say, he completes his transformation from revolutionary to “caudillo” — one of the Latin American despots he once so despised.

“We are nearing a dictatorship,” Ms Téllez told The Times. “He is concentrating power, buying officials, eliminating institutions, creating the conditions to advance his own authoritarian project.All that he needs now is to remain in power,” she said in a reference to Mr Ortega’s plans for constitutional reform allowing him to stand for re-election when his term expires. “He needs only parliamentary approval to do so,” she noted, adding: “He doesn’t have the votes yet, but he is close. And he will buy the ones he needs.”

Nor would diminishing support be an obstacle to his re-election, Ms Téllez said. “He stole the elections in 2008. You have to presume that he would steal them again in 2011.” Dissident Sandinistas were barred, along with other political opponents, from standing in the 2008 congressional elections, widely denounced as fraudulent. Ms Téllez, the founder of the breakaway Sandinista Renovation Movement, mounted a hunger strike until doctors’ warnings forced her to call it off after 12 days.

As the head of the Sandinista Army’s Western Command, Ms Téllez led the brigade that took León, the first city to fall to the Sandinistas. She was “Commander Two” in the 1978 storming of the National Palace, seen as a pivotal moment in the overthrow of the Somoza regime.

Now she says she is regularly subjected to intimidation by the Government and marked out as fair game for militant supporters. On Sunday “we will have our own celebrations,” she said. “Daniel Ortega has appropriated the legacy of the Sandinista Revolution and abandoned its principles.”

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