Daniel Ortega’s regime again moved its chips in the Nicaraguan diplomatic headquarters in Venezuela in 2022. The dictatorship returned to former ambassador Orlando José Gómez Zamora, who this time —as Minister Counselor— will assume consular functions, according to the ministerial agreement of the Foreign Ministry 33 -2022, published in La Gaceta, Official State Gazette.
The return of Gómez Zamora is marked by the removal of María Isabel Martínez Chavarría as ambassador to Venezuela, a position for which she was accredited on May 7, 2022, and who had precisely replaced Gómez Zamora when he was removed. to later be appointed ambassador to China.
Venezuela is one of the key political allies of the Ortega regime in the hemisphere. Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro He was the only head of state present at the self-proclamation ceremony of Ortega and Rosario Murillo as winners of the voting process on November 7, 2021, which was carried out without any political competition and under the shadow of repression and electoral fraud.
Chavarría’s removal was made official through presidential agreement 121-2022 published in La Gaceta on July 29. He is the third diplomatic representative that Nicaragua has had before Venezuela in 2022.
Before the rapid removal of Gómez Zamora and Chavarría, the embassy was in charge of Yaoska Calderón Marín, who was removed on March 24, 2022, after being appointed in January 2018. Now Gómez returns to take charge of the diplomatic headquarters in Venezuela, but with a minor diplomatic post.
“Ambassador for a few weeks”
Gómez Zamora has become a curious case in the regime’s diplomatic corps, becoming in 2002 a kind of “ambassador for a few weeks”when taking into account the time he has been accredited in Venezuela and China, in his last assignments.
The diplomat served as plenipotentiary ambassador to Venezuela between March 24 and May 20, 2022. On the 25th of that same month, he was appointed by the Ortega regime as the first Nicaraguan ambassador to the People’s Republic of China.
However, the official spent a little over a month as the regime’s diplomatic representative to China. On June 28, Murillo announced the accreditation as the new representative to the Asian country of Ian Coronel Kinloch, nullifying the appointment of Gómez Zamora.
Before these brief stays, Gómez Zamora spent two years in Argentina, between February 2020 and March 2022. He has been one of the diplomats with the longest track record and loyalty to the regime since he came to power in 2007.
