US apathy helped Ortega win Nicaragua

By Clara Ferreira Marques

The presidential elections in Nicaragua were, as predicted by the Secretary General of the Organization of American States, the worst possible.

The repression had been escalating before the elections, with the arrest of dozens of top opposition figures, including all credible presidential candidates and leaders of the country’s main business organization. Tens of thousands of Nicaraguans have already been forced to seek asylum in neighboring Costa Rica or have fled further afield.

On Sunday, abstention rates rose to more than 80%, according to independent observers. Still, Daniel Ortega, a Sandinista revolutionary turned autocrat, claimed a landslide victory.

Thats false. It is also the moment that should lead the United States and the world to turn their attention to one of the poorest and least stable nations in the hemisphere and act emphatically. First, because of the evident suffering of the Nicaraguan people and the risks for a region ill prepared to face a deteriorating police state. But also because Washington’s policy of viewing Central America largely through the lens of migration made this democratic deterioration more likely.

Today, there is no quick way to get rid of the increasingly paranoid Ortega and his wife and vice president, Rosario Murillo: finally, it is the Nicaraguans themselves who must solve this crisis, but civil society and the opposition have been stifled and every detractor is now a “traitor”To the nation. However, that set of circumstances suggests prudence, not inaction.

Ortega, a former guerrilla leader who helped topple dictator Anastasio Somoza in 1979, came to power in 2007 and now runs the country in the same way as his former nemesis. It has undermined institutions and basic freedoms, presiding over a sharp deterioration starting in 2018, when protests against a pension reform that turned into a popular uprising against it were violently repressed. More than 300 people died in the repression.

Since 2020, the Government has introduced new enforcement rules, including a “foreign agentsRussian-inspired ”that limits non-governmental organizations, in addition to cybercrime legislation that regulates what can be posted on social media and effectively criminalizes any unwanted online content. There is no longer any printed newspaper.

The economic context has been no less bleak after three years of contraction, with the lingering consequences of devastating hurricanes and a pandemic. Nicaragua continues to be one of the nations with the lowest vaccination rates.

It is not easy to influence isolated autocracies, particularly those led by aging leaders backed by security forces, who see few safe exits. The siege mentality rules: Belarus, Myanmar and others tell us. It is especially challenging in a region where the United States has a history of misfocused and damaging interventions and, worse still, of course, when extreme poverty makes it difficult to pressure the government without harming the population. Shame makes little difference, specific sanctions work slowly. That does not mean that the world should be left out.

The first task is to condemn the elections, as many regional and international powers have already done, and to demand the release of political prisoners. Unofficial diplomacy could help, given that the government is entrenched, but also uneasy about empty polling places that contradict its claims of popularity.

There being no positive measures, Ortega it should be seen even more isolated, with the withdrawal of ambassadors, potentially even the expulsion of entities such as the Organization of American States. Washington and Brussels must pressure regional powers, including those that have refrained from condemning or have been indecisive, such as Mexico and Argentina, to do their part. You have to focus on Taiwan as well, yet another from a small group of sponsors that includes Russia and Venezuela.

There is also room for important additional coordinated international sanctions targeting the people who enable the regime, as established by the Reborn Act passed by the US Congress earlier this month, and especially the Army, cutting off any cooperation.

Even more crucial, the West can stop undermining its own diplomacy. According to Fitch Ratings, between January and September of this year, the Nicaraguan public sector received the enormous sum of US $ 880 million from official creditors such as the Central American Bank for Economic Integration and the World Bank, including a contribution equivalent to US $ 354 million from the International Monetary Fund, an organization that the West still dominates, which is part of a global allocation of special drawing rights.

That is an inexplicable generosity, especially considering that the United States had already introduced legislation in 2018 to restrict funds from international financial institutions to Nicaragua.

There is still the revocation of Nicaragua’s trade privileges, part of the Free Trade Agreement between Central America and the United States. It is easier said than done, given that the United States buys almost half of the country’s exports and ordinary people will suffer more than a regime that has already been shielded. Nonetheless, it is a powerful threat.

This could also be a time for Washington to consider the damage caused by years of narrow, selfish, and short-term policies in Central America. He invested too much time and money in intervention in the eighties, but not enough in reconstruction in the decades that followed, as Salvador Martí i Puig, from the University of Girona, pointed out to me. The focus on limiting migration ultimately blinded authorities to other problems, including Ortega himself.

It is advisable to invest in the origin of the migration, but who receives that money? Why criticize Nicaragua and then do little to constrain Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele, who has removed superior judges and is accused of dismantling institutions at a more alarming rate than Hugo Chávez himself in Venezuela? Or the deterioration of democracy in Honduras?

As Christine Wade, Washington College professor of political science and author of several books on the region, told me: “Democracy and the rule of law in the region are on the wane, and US policy has been very ineffective, if not counterproductive, in preventing it.”.

Supporting the region’s democracies is easier when they are alive. Doing it when they are already seriously ill is much more difficult. Nicaragua is the proof.