The swearing-in of Nicaragua’s dictator will signal the defenselessness of democracy

(Interamerican Institute for Democracy) After perpetrating all possible crimes to continue holding power in the model of 21st Century Socialism, Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo now stage the “swearing-in of Nicaragua’s dictator” on the basis of the fraudulent and macabre events held on 7 November of 2021 that were the so-called “elections”. It is the latest and most recent success of the “vote-catching dictatorships” of Castrochavism in which “people vote but do not elect”, a system that by its very nature uses “State-sponsored terrorism” and flaunts its impunity. This is certainly a milestone that will define either an effective defense of democracy or its defenselessness.

Factual reality reveals that the dispute for power in the Americas in this 21st century is between the defense of freedom and human rights, against those regimes who have State-sponsored terrorism as a system of government. It is the fight between freedom and oppression, between the temporariness of each administration in power with accountability and the indefinite tenure in government with impunity, between democracy and dictatorship. In concrete terms of today, it is the fight between 21st Century Socialism -or Castrochavism- and democracy that is the people’s right.

Cuba’s dictatorship, in power for over 63 years, leads a group of dictatorial regimes it installed and sustains in Venezuela, Bolivia, and Nicaragua that violate human rights using Cuba’s same model and methodology which also produces the same outcome of oppression, narco-States, national destruction and misery. Cuba also leads the international scheme of alignment with similar regimes throughout the world such as those from; China, Iran, Russia, North Korea’s and elsewhere, to provide support to the dictatorships of the Americas and as a quid pro quo to coverup the crimes they perpetrate and destabilize democracies.

A group of States with democracy have upturned their foreign policy and detoured the important resources of their citizens to the sustainment and defense of Castrochavism’s dictatorships; Fernandez/Kirchner from Argentina and Lopez Obrador from Mexico have become accomplices in the covering-up of crimes against humanity that have been and are being committed in Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, and Nicaragua. These governments are now identified as “para-dictatorial governments”.

The recently passed 2021, is the most notorious testimonial of the perpetration of crimes such as; usurpation, criminal association, coercion, material and ideological falsehood, suppression of rights, false accusations and prosecution, undue imprisonment, judicial manipulation, prevarication, torture, attempts against the physical wellbeing of persons, assassinations, violation of the freedom of the press and freedom of expression and dozens of crimes that are topped-off with the recent electoral fraud.

Ortega and Murillo’s crimes have been flagrant and are publicly corroborated, they range from the legislation and promulgation of “despicable laws” that instead of protecting human rights, institutionally violate them, to the public manipulation of all the branches of government, to the threats emanating from the government, the systematic political persecution with the judicialization of false accusations, the undue imprisonment of political candidates, the forcible exile of other political leaders, the illegal electoral disqualification, all the way up to the preparation and consummation of the electoral fraud to coverup the nearly 80% absenteeism of voters.

The iter crimini, or “path of the crime” of Nicaragua’s dictator, his wife, and his group of organized crime is documented and publicly and internationally corroborated. No one has any doubt that they hold and retain power using the “State-sponsored terrorism” system that is “the utilization of illegitimate means by a government meant to instill fear or terror in the civilian population in order to reach its objectives, or to promote behaviors that would not otherwise occur by themselves”.

According to Article 7 of the Rome Statute, State-sponsored terrorism is comprised by “crimes against humanity” that include any of the following acts when they are committed as part of a generalized or systematic attack against a civilian population and with the knowledge of such attack; “…e) Imprisonment or any other serious deprivation of the individual’s physical freedom, in violation of fundamental standards of international law; f) Torture…”. In Nicaragua’s case, the “fundamental standards” are contained in the American Convention on Human Rights.

With this overwhelming proof, American leaders, democracies, the International Criminal Court, the United Nations and the Organization of American States, have only one duty -that benefits their own security and interests- and that is; to enforce the law and end Nicaragua’s dictatorship. Otherwise, and under their responsibility, a situation of democracy’s defenselessness will have been installed.

*Attorney & Political Scientist. Director of the Interamerican Institute for Democracy.

Translated from Spanish by; Edgar L. Terrazas, member of the American Translators Association, ATA # 234680.