The Plaza de la Revolución, in Managua, is ready for the presidential inauguration of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo, this Monday, January 10. The old Sandinista commander and his wife have spared no effort to celebrate, but the day before few delegations have confirmed their participation, so the regime decided to blame the coronavirus pandemic as “responsible” for the poor international presence at the event. .
“We are aware that the world is experiencing a time of challenges to health, that there may be more delegations, fewer delegations, in terms of the fact that flights are sometimes canceled and there are also special cases that must be attended to in the families of the people who come ”, warned Murillo during his monologue at noon this Friday. Then he read the squalid list of delegations that will attend his inauguration.
At the event, scheduled to take place in the afternoon, will be representatives of Cuba, Venezuela, Belize, Honduras, China, Iran, Bolivia, Palestine, the Sahrawi Arab Republic, Mexico, Argentina, Russia, India, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia , North Korea, Angola, Syria, Turkey, Belarus, Egypt, Malaysia, and Yemen. In addition, a delegation from the Alba Secretariat and the former Secretary General of SICA and former President of Guatemala, Vinicio Cerezo, will be present.
On November 12, the Organization of American States (OAS) approved a resolution that declared illegitimate the votes carried out on November 7 in Nicaragua and He urged, through the last resolution of December 8, the holding of new elections in this country. For this reason, most of the countries of the Western Hemisphere will not attend the inauguration of Ortega and Murillo.
Argentina was one of the 25 countries that last November 12 voted in favor of the OAS resolution. The Ortega regime – even – described the Alberto Fernández government as an “instrument of imperialism.” But after high-level negotiations, Nicaraguan Foreign Minister Denis Moncada supported Argentina on Friday, January 7, to occupy the presidency pro tempore of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) andthe Argentine ambassador in Managua, Mateo Daniel Capitanich, He confirmed to the newspaper La Prensa that the Government of his country will send a representative to Ortega’s inauguration.
Xi Jinping sends a special envoy sanctioned by the United States
Meanwhile, China will be represented by the vice chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress (ANP, the Chinese Legislative), Cao Jianming, the official Xinhua agency reported. Cao’s attendance takes place at the invitation of the Nicaraguan government, according to the spokesman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry Wang Wenbin on Friday.
Cao Jianming was sanctioned by the United States Department of the Treasury on December 7, 2020, along with 13 other vice-presidents of the People’s Congress of China. “Undermine the autonomy of Hong Kong and restrict freedom of expression or assembly”, within the framework of the protests that took place that year in this city demanding civil liberties.
Nicaragua, increasingly isolated internationally by Ortega’s authoritarian drift, took a crucial step on December 9 to get closer to China by breaking diplomatic relations with Taiwan – whose sovereignty Beijing claims – and recognizing the principle of “one China” that advocates the Asian giant.
The decision, which involved the reestablishment of diplomatic ties with China, left Taipei without one of its increasingly few allies and broke a 31-year relationship in which the island had become the main aid worker and one of the main partners. trade of the Central American nation.
Shortly after the break with Taiwan, Nicaragua began receiving thousands of covid-19 vaccines as part of a Chinese donation of one million doses. Managua and Beijing had already had diplomatic relations between 1985 and 1990, during Ortega’s first term as president.
With information from Efe.
