The United States has not seen so far “any substantial indication that the Ortega-Murillo regime is interested in any type of negotiation that moves the ball in a constructive and positive direction,” he said Thursday. State Department spokesman Ned Pricehours after it became known that the private sector supports a national dialogue “without preconditions” with the national demand for the freedom of all political prisoners.
Price offered these statements at a press conference in Washington, in which he assured that if they saw the interest in talking, it would be a good thing and would be supported by the US Administration “as appropriate.”
The spokesman did not explain what he meant by this “as appropriate” statement, but reiterated US claims that last November’s vote was a “pantomime,” as US President Joe Biden called it on the same day. November in a White House statement.
The Ortega regime faces a crisis of legitimacy, after more than 40 countries —25 of them grouped in the Organization of American States (OAS)— they ignored the results of the votes with which Ortega and Murillo secured a fourth consecutive term after eliminating political competition, imprisoning seven opposition candidates and imposing terror arresting political, civic and business leaders.
“A true election is more than the technical exercise of dropping a ballot into a ballot box. A free and fair election, a real election, involves much more than that, and what we saw last November was just the technical exercise. That certainly did not constitute a free, fair and democratic election,” Price reiterated.
A month before the contested electoral process, the opposition deputy Wálmaro Gutiérrez, head of the Parliament’s economic commission and close to Ortega, maintained that after Ortega’s ratification in office, a national dialogue would be convened. On January 19, Murillo announced meetings to discuss the Executive’s “economy model,” ignoring the demands for the freedom of prisoners of conscience and the restoration of freedoms in the country.
The Superior Council of Private Enterprise (COSEP), headed by the energy sector businessman César Zamora, published a statement this Thursday, January 27, in which announced their support for talks with the Executive, after discussing the issue in the Board of Directors last Wednesday. However, a director of the union body, consulted by CONFIDENTIALaffirmed anonymously that until now there has been no rapprochement and assured that democracy is “essential for the private sector”, despite the close relationship that businessmen had with the executive between 2009 and 2018 in a co-government that freed Ortega to control the country and advance politically in the consolidation of his political model, while his counterpart made money without criticizing.
“Clean slate”
In his inaugural speech on January 10, Ortega proposed “clean slate”, after the 2018 massacre and his aspiration that things return to the state they were before the massive protests against the Executive, which were answered with repression. After the presidential swearing-in ceremony, Murillo supported her husband’s vision and praised the late model of alliance with the private sector, broken by repression, to attack her former allies.
“The wealthy had the right to work and make even more money for themselves with the fact that we all participated in the alliance model, and they earned, gave some work and contributed something to the growth we had. But that’s where the debacle came. It is selfishness, human greed and the attempt to return us to a disastrous past, a disastrous past, and the attempt to kill us all,” Murillo accused.
Until now, the regime does not accept the human rights violations and affirms without evidence that it is the object of a campaign of interventionism and that those events were actually a coup d’état. However, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), attached to the OAS, reported that 355 were killed in the context of the protests.
In the opposition demonstrations, the excessive use of force by the Police and paramilitary forces was documented, and the commission of crimes against humanity. More than 100,000 people have since gone into exile, while Ortega accepted a dialogue without stopping the repression.
Since September 2018, the country has lived under a police state that prevents opponents from protesting, who have also denounced siege on their homes and persecution. The international community has responded on several occasions by sanctioning members of the presidential family, members of the Police and the Army, and other institutions, which the regime considers to be attacks on the country.
Asked about the possibility that, with the assumption of power of the new president of Honduras, Xiomara Castro, which occurred this Thursday, January 27, the possibility of a communication channel with the Ortega Murillo would be opened, spokesman Price acknowledged that “I have nothing to offer (comment) in terms of the role that Honduras may or may not be playing in regards to Nicaragua.”
