The report by Urnas Abiertas, International IDEA, and Andrés Bello University, on “Nicaragua elections 2021: a malicious plan to end democracy” concludes that the November 7 elections lack “legitimacy” and calls on the international community to not knowing the results of the election.
With top opposition leaders in jail and in exile, and under a hardened police state, the expectations of the Nicaraguan opposition cling to the impact that diplomatic pressure could have. However, the secretary general of International IDEA, the political scientist and former vice president of Costa Rica, Kevin Casas-Zamora, warns in this interview with CONFIDENTIAL and This week which airs this Sunday at 8:00 PM on Confidential Youtube and Facebook, on the limits of international political pressure in the internal situation of Nicaragua.
What does it mean not to recognize the legitimacy of an election? Is it equivalent to ignoring a government? Or to disqualify it as an undemocratic government?
We have already been in that scenario in other countries. There have been elections, particularly in the case of Venezuela, that have not been recognized by the international community, and this precedent is important to be clear about, because there is a perception that the non-recognition of the result that emerges from illegitimate elections is like a wand. magic, which will transform the situation of democratic collapse in Nicaragua. And that is not like that. This has not been the case in Venezuela.
Furthermore, in Venezuela not only was there no ignorance of a spurious electoral result, but there was also the recognition of a parallel government, which was accepted as legitimate by more than 50 countries in the world, without this having any effect: there it is. Nicolás Maduro comfortably installed in the Miraflores Palace still.
Therefore, we must be careful with the expectations of what a non-recognition of the electoral result may imply. What it implies in immediate terms is that, ipso facto, the Government of Nicaragua is beginning to be considered as a non-legitimate Government, and that may trigger some consequences of a diplomatic nature, although it is not certain.
For example, it would force OAS member states to suspend Nicaragua as a member of the organization. That is something that they could have already done, it was on the table for discussion since the massacre of 2018, and here we are more than three years later, with Nicaragua participating in all the meetings of the OAS Permanent Council.
So, ultimately, it is not a legal problem. It is a political decision that the countries have to make if they are going to make that government pay a price, which is considered illegitimate. The other thing is that, even if there were a generalized reaction, there is a limit to the effect that pressure from the international community can have on the internal situation of Nicaragua.
What implications could a non-recognition of the legitimacy of the results in the actions of these governments have, for example, around multilateral credit organizations: International Monetary Fund, World Bank, Inter-American Development Bank, which are directly related to the OAS system?
That is the question that seems much more important to me, that is, whether political sanction is going to trigger economic sanctions. So far countries have been very reluctant to do that; And in terms of the impact that may occur through international financial organizations, the key country is the United States, it is the one that has to make the decision whether to sanction Nicaragua in this way.
It is important that, from now on, the application of clauses for the protection of democracy, in international organizations, go hand in hand with financial sanctions. That, generally speaking, would be a positive step. However, in this case the application of international financial sanctions to a country, in the state of economic vulnerability in which Nicaragua is, implies humanitarian consequences with which we must comply; It implies, in the case of the United States, adding to the migratory problem, which they are trying to manage, which exists with the other countries of northern Central America.
So, even in the case of the United States, which is the one who could have a decisive weight in the application of economic sanctions, it seems to me that they are going to think about it a lot, because the humanitarian and migratory consequences are of care.
How do you see the Central American countries in the face of this crisis? This week, for example, President Juan Orlando Hernández arrived in Managua to sign an agreement with Daniel Ortega; on the other hand, Guatemala abstained from voting against the Ortega regime in the OAS; Nayib Bukele has voted against, and distanced himself from this agreement, and Costa Rica is promoting an alliance for democracy with Panama and the Dominican Republic. There is no political center in Central America or in SICA in relation to this crisis …
Nor will there be. The mechanisms for coordinating political positions (in Central America they have been broken for a long time, because each of the countries has its own history of democratic deterioration. We are talking about the democratic collapse in Nicaragua, which is a very special case, particularly intense, with a repressive element that had not been seen in Latin America for forty years, but we can speak of the fraud perpetrated in Honduras in the previous election.
What is happening in El Salvador is clearly a process of visible democratic degradation, which is a transparent application of the manual of democratic regression, which we have seen operating all over the world: in Turkey, Hungary, Sri Lanka, now in El Savior.
Each of these countries has its own history of democratic decline that they don’t want to be messed with; So there will be no possibility of a consensual reaction in Central America, at most there will be, as can be expected, some kind of coordination between Costa Rica, Panama and the Dominican Republic, there are three countries that are trying to coordinate positions on these issues, but the effect that this could have on Nicaragua is very limited.
What is the connection that could exist between international pressure and the restoration of democratic freedoms in Nicaragua? Can the international community have an impact on this process of restoring freedom of assembly, of mobilization in Nicaragua, and that the police state is suspended?
I, unfortunately, am not optimistic in the case of Nicaragua. In other words, international pressure will generate irresistible pressure so that the regime, from one moment to the next, opens up to negotiation; That, if anything, can be achieved by a terminal economic crisis, of great proportions, it could generate, as there have been cases in the history of democratic transitions in Latin America, the obligation of the regime to sit down and negotiate.
This is an issue that goes far beyond Nicaragua, now the sources of support, even financial, that authoritarian governments have, are much greater than in the past. Before, in one of these circumstances, an authoritarian regime was isolated, now not; You can go knock on China, you will charge a price, but you will not ask any questions; he can go knock on Russia’s door, which will give him some help in order to mortify the United States in its own geopolitical sphere of influence.
So, the capacity of the international community to put authoritarian regimes in check has diminished a lot, it is not the situation that was thirty years ago, when the undemocratic transgressions of a government immediately led to an isolation on the part of the international community, no longer .
There is a national and international demand, around the Ortega regime, for the release of political prisoners, including the seven presidential candidates from the opposition. What future does this claim have?
Those are hostages that Ortega has taken, and Ortega will use them after November 7 as a negotiating letter, precisely to try to prevent the economy from collapsing; to try to avoid political and diplomatic isolation. Those are not political prisoners, they are hostages.
You mentioned a moment ago the impact that the Joe Biden Administration can have on different governments and international organizations. Biden has announced a policy of multilateral coordination actions with Europe and with other Latin American governments in this crisis. Can you exert effective pressure?
Yes, effective, yes. If it is effective enough to promote a political opening in Nicaragua, we do not know, because the international climate has changed a lot around the protection of democracy, the price that autocrats pay is much lower, and to that you have to add that The United States has suffered a serious and visible loss of influence in Latin America in the last fifteen years; then, the ability of the Biden Administration to mobilize the entire region so that, in some way, diplomatic pressure is generated, Regarding the Ortega regime in Nicaragua, it seems to me that it is more limited than it was in the past. Can it be effective? Yes, as we said in the cases of international financial organizations, it can have concrete effects that do not come without collateral consequences of a humanitarian and migratory nature. But in terms of whether this is what generates a regional phenomenon, a regional collective action to intervene diplomatically in the case of Nicaragua, I highly doubt it.
If the political solution, at the end of the day, is in Nicaragua, in the capacity of the opposition to mobilize that political majority, or to rescue its leadership, which today is in jail and in exile; however, there is a police state in the country that prevents the opposition from recovering that initiative.
That is a tragedy that we have already seen unfold to its full extent in the case of Venezuela. I do not believe that in the last 100 years in Latin America (there has been) a national collapse of the magnitude that has occurred in Venezuela: a political collapse, an economic collapse, a collapse of public order; And yet there is Nicolás Maduro, and there is no obvious possibility of getting rid of him.
One of the things that has changed, which makes the autocrats pay a lower price, is that, with globalization, the possibility for people to mobilize and leave their countries, to go elsewhere, is greater, so people vote with your feet. So, in a very perverse way, globalization is allowing escape valves to be generated that help sustain authoritarian regimes like Maduro’s and Ortega’s. I fear that the impotence of the international community, no matter how good intentions, what will end up generating is a massive migratory flow.
But, at the end of the day, what you are saying is that Ortega and Murillo can maintain this dictatorship with impunity?
Sadly, the evidence that we have seen in Latin America, in the last fifteen years, suggests that. I am not predicting it, and certainly, much less, I am looking forward to it. In other words, I would like to see something completely different, but frankly, nothing we have seen in the last fifteen or twenty years, in Latin America, leads me to think that the reaction of the international community will be enough to change the dynamic that It has been under construction in Nicaragua for fifteen years, and it has become very acute recently, with absolute impunity. If three hundred-odd deaths from government violence in 2018 was not able to generate a severe reaction from the international community, nothing will. If three hundred-odd deaths is not serious enough, seven imprisoned presidential candidates are not going to be.
