Two months after winning a sham election that only confirmed his power, Nicaragua’s dictator Daniel Ortega held a ceremony in Managua this Monday (10) to take up his new term, the fourth in a row.
Ortega was with his wife, Rosario Murillo, and devoted a good part of his speech to directing harsh attacks on the United States — not by chance, hours earlier American and European authorities had announced the expansion of sanctions on authorities linked to the regime.
The event was attended by figures linked to the Latin American left, such as Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro and Cuban regime leader Miguel Díaz-Canel, and representatives from China, Iran, Mexico and Argentina, among other countries.
Also present was the rightist Juan Orlando Hernández, current president of Honduras. The leader of the neighboring country leaves office on January 27, having as his successor Xiomara Castro de Zelaya, involved in allegations of drug trafficking in the United States – he denies any wrongdoing. It is speculated that, because of the case, he may take refuge in Nicaragua.
The term that officially begins this Monday will be the fifth for the politician who was one of the leaders of the Sandinista Revolution, which in the 1970s overthrew the Somoza dynasty — after being elected to a term in 1984, he returned to office in 2007 through the polls and He has been in power ever since, uninterrupted.
The November election was not recognized by the majority of the international community, since, in the months before the vote, the regime arrested seven opposing candidates on charges of money laundering and treason. Ortega actually ran against five other names, but they only entered the race as part of the theater — they were all his allies. In the end, the dictator got 76% of the votes, according to official results.
“The United States will have to change in relation to Latin America, because now there is resistance and an awareness of patriotism,” said the Nicaraguan on Monday. “We will no longer let them take away our riches and we will seek together common projects to fight the poverty of our peoples. The example of Venezuela is an example of strength and resistance against the US.”
Ortega added that the repression of protests in his country in 2018, when more than 300 protesters were killed in confrontation with security forces and paramilitary groups aligned with the dictator, was actually a “fight against internal terrorism, which murdered police and attacked hospitals and public institutions”.
Wearing a cap and a red sports jacket, the dictator removed his presidential sash at the end of his speech and waved it to the crowd, saying he was committed to fighting for the Nicaraguan family.
Just hours before the ceremony, the US and European Union expanded economic and diplomatic sanctions against officials linked to Ortega. The Europeans announced the freezing of assets and the imposition of a travel veto on two of the dictator’s sons and five other people linked to the regime, the police, the Supreme Electoral Council and the Nicaraguan Institute of Telecommunications and Posts.
EU member states said in a document that these people committed “serious human rights violations by supporting fraudulent elections”. The National Police was also accused of “inflicting degrading treatment, including physical and psychological torture, on those who opposed Ortega’s regime.”
The 116 officials who received US sanctions belong to the army, the Ministry of Defense and the country’s state-owned oil company.
In addition to them, mayors and other politicians, prosecutors and authorities linked to the police will also no longer be able to enter American territory. According to the State Department, they “helped undermine democracy in Nicaragua.”
On election night in November, US President Joe Biden called the Managua election a farce and said his government and the international community should use “diplomatic and economic tools” to help Nicaraguans and hold Ortega and Murillo to account. . The European Union adopted the same tone on the date.
The new sanctions, therefore, are not exactly a surprise.
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