Alberto Rubio
In a conversation with The Diplomat yesterday, Costa Rican Foreign Minister Rodolfo Solano expressed his “deep concern”, shared with Spain and the European Union, about the electoral process in Nicaragua, which will hold presidential elections this Sunday.
Solano, who ended his tour of Europe in Madrid, where among other meetings he also attended the COP26 in Glasgow, met on Thursday with his Spanish colleague, José Manuel Albares, with whom he discussed deepening the close relations between the two countries. In this regard, according to a note from the Foreign Ministry, “Albares reiterated his desire for President Alvarado to visit Spain“.
The two also reviewed the situation in Nicaragua, which for Solano “is a matter of concern for democratic institutions, human rights and freedom of the press and expression”: The Costa Rican minister explained to The Diplomat that “the elections (in Nicaragua) lack the minimum conditions of participation, transparency and inclusiveness, since, in addition to the fact that there will be no observers, foreign journalists will not be able to enter Nicaragua”.
Costa Rican foreign minister, who did not wish to speculate on possible sanctions against Nicaragua until after the elections, expressed his desire for Daniel Ortega’s regime to recover “the spaces necessary to return to the path of democracy” and stressed that Costa Rica “is willing to contribute whatever is necessary”, while at the same time proposing the use of multilateral spaces of international law, as well as diplomatic mediation by Spain or the EU.
“The only letter of introduction that the Central American region should have is democratic institutionality”, he argued, “and this will be difficult to achieve if (Ortega) has presidential candidates imprisoned or if he has journalists doing their work from Costa Rica”.
“The internal process in Nicaragua needs to bring together all internal actors“, added Rodolfo Solano, for whom “this is a very clear opportunity to find out who is on the right side of history and who is not. And history demands democracy, human rights and freedom of the press and expression”.
