Biden enacts law for new sanctions against Ortega’s Nicaragua for becoming a dictatorship

The president of the United States, Joe Biden, promulgated a law that enables new sanctions against the government of Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua, which has become a dictatorship against which he will apply all available legal and diplomatic weight.

Biden sanctioned the “Law to Strengthen Nicaragua’s Adherence to the Conditions for the Electoral Reform of 2021”, better known as the RENACER Law for its acronym in English, which imposes sanctions on the regime of Daniel Ortega, reported the White House, highlighting that it allows restricting multilateral bank loans and fighting regime corruption.

In a statement, the Executive thanked the leadership of the legislators who promoted the initiative, approved last week with broad bipartisan support.

Among them are Dick Durbin, the number two Democrat in the Upper House, and also the Democrat Bob Menéndez, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, in addition to Republican senators Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz.

Also, the Democratic congressman appears Albio Sires, and his Republican colleague Maria Elvira Salazar, whose ex-husband, Arturo Cruz, is one of the seven presidential hopefuls arrested.

Ortega, in power since 2007, “won”On Sunday a fourth consecutive term in an electoral process with imprisoned opponents, illegalized parties and tens of thousands of exiles.

Diplomatic and economic tools

“What Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega and his wife, Vice President Rosario Murillo, orchestrated today was a pantomime election that was neither free nor fair, and certainly not democratic.“, said Biden the same Sunday in a statement from the White House, describing it as “farce” The elections.

USA “will use all the diplomatic and economic tools at its disposal to support the people of Nicaragua”He promised.

The law BE REBORN presents an arsenal of measures to increase pressure on Managua.

It requires increasing, in coordination with Canada, the European Union (EU) and Latin American and Caribbean countries, the selective sanctions of the United States to people involved in human rights abuses and obstruction of free elections.

In addition, it expands the supervision of loans from international financial institutions to Managua, and asks to review Nicaragua’s participation in the free trade pact between the United States, Central America and the Dominican Republic (CAFTA-DR).

It also adds to Nicaragua to the list of Central American countries subject to visa restrictions for corruption, and requires more intelligence reports on the activities of the Russian government in the Central American country, including reports on military sales from Moscow to Managua.

The United States has already imposed economic sanctions on Murillo and three of the couple’s children in recent years, as well as heads of the Central Bank, the Police and the Army, and canceled visas for a hundred Nicaraguan officials for corruption and human rights abuses. .