The Diplomat
The Congress has asked the Government, at the initiative of the PP and with the support of the PSOE, that Spanish, European and international development cooperation funds destined for Nicaragua are used to “prop up the repressive apparatus, the clientelist programs and the corruption of the dictatorship’s leadership”.
Last December 19, the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Congress approved a motion regarding the electoral fraud in Nicaragua, presented by the Popular Parliamentary Group, which urges the Government “not to recognize as legitimate the authorities who proclaimed themselves government and opposition in Nicaragua on January 10, 2022, having been elected as a result of the illegitimate electoral process of last November 7, 2021”.
Likewise, the motion includes an amendment presented by the Socialist Group in which the Executive is urged to “establish strict control mechanisms with criteria based on the defense of human rights and democratic criteria that guarantee that the development cooperation funds of Spain and the European Union, together with the funds of the international financial institutions of which Spain and the European Union are part, are not used in such a way that they prop up the repressive apparatus, the clientelist programs and the corruption of the leadership of the dictatorship in Nicaragua and all its necessary cooperators.” “This is especially important in the particular case of the Central American Bank for Economic Integration, where Spain is the only extra-regional partner from Europe”, it adds.
Pedro Sánchez’s government has repeatedly denounced the situation in Nicaragua, which has resulted in a clear deterioration of diplomatic relations between Madrid and Managua. A few days after the 2021 elections – in which President Daniel Ortega won his reelection for a fifth term with 75% of the vote, according to official data rejected by the opposition – the Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares, told the press that in Nicaragua there had been no “free, fair or competitive elections, and the opponents who wished to compete are in jail”. “They cannot be called elections, they have been a mockery, a mockery of the people of Nicaragua, of the EU, of the international community and, above all, of democracy,” he continued.
For its part, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs rejected in a communiqué the Nicaraguan elections “for the unacceptable and arbitrary conditions in which they were held” and demanded “free, fair, transparent and well attended elections that guarantee the participation of all Nicaraguans”. It also denounced the “repressive and authoritarian regime” protected by “a regressive legislative framework and the connivance of the Legislative and Judicial powers, controlled by Ortega”.
