According to electoral analysts in the United Stater, former President Donald Trump has almost secured his Republican nomination for the November presidential elections, however, Nikki Haley, the latest contender in his path, has decided to stay in the race, hoping to secure enough victories to spoil the party for her former boss.
Haley served as the United States Ambassador to the United Nations (UN) for almost two years during the Trump administration, and from her position, she was well aware of the situation in Nicaragua: she criticized the Security Council’s passivity regarding the country’s crisis and raised her voice to advocate for press freedom.
Projections indicate that Trump is very close to becoming the candidate, with the path almost clear. He won the Iowa caucus, and this Tuesday, the primaries in New Hampshire, two states that had never before been won by the same candidate.
But the former ambassador to the UN does not seem to be afraid of these defeats. “This race is far from over; there are dozens of states ahead,” she said after learning of her defeat this Tuesday. The next stop is Nevada, followed by South Carolina, the state where Haley is originally from and where she served as governor from 2011 to 2017.
Her position on Nicaragua
Nikki Haley was appointed to the United Nations to precisely by Trump, a decision criticized within the Republican Party as she lacked experience in foreign service.
From her position, she compared the situation in Nicaragua to that of Venezuela, stating that in the Central American country, “there have been more innocent people killed by (Daniel) Ortega than by (Nicolás) Maduro in Venezuela.”
In another session, following the presentation of a UN report on human rights violations against Nicaraguans amid protests that began in April, Haley stated that the document confirmed what the U.S. had been saying for months: that Daniel Ortega “is terrorizing his own people.”
“The Nicaraguan government must end its campaign of violence and intimidation. Until the people of Nicaragua can express their voice freely and peacefully,” said Haley.
Chaired session of the Security Council
On September 16, 2018, the UN Security Council, despite opposition from several member countries, discussed the crisis in Nicaragua at the request of the United States, represented by Haley, who held the presidency of the Council for the month of September.
During the session, Haley questioned how many people had to die for the crisis in Nicaragua to be considered a “matter of peace and security.”
“The Security Council cannot be a passive observer while Nicaragua continues its descent into a failed, corrupt, and dictatorial state, because we know where that path leads,” she denounced, asserting that the dictators Ortega in Nicaragua and Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela shared “the same corrupt cloth, both are students of the same failed ideology, and both are dictators who live in fear of their own people.”
She left the UN but remained informed about the situation
Nikki Haley unexpectedly resigned from her position at the UN in October 2018, and her departure from the international organization was completed later that year. “She’s done a fantastic job. We’ve done a fantastic job together,” stated Trump after her resignation.
Despite leaving the international body, Haley remained informed about the situation in Nicaragua. In January 2019, she shared an article from The Washington Post about the detention of journalists and activists. “With all the talk about the mistreatment of journalists, we must not forget about Nicaragua. Ortega’s dictatorship is destroying what remains of the free press. It’s a disaster for freedom in our hemisphere,” she wrote on her Twitter account, previously mentioned as “X”.
With little chance
The projections indicate that Donald Trump is the favorite to be the candidate and has directly attacked his former official. He has called her a “globalist,” “empty head,” and does not forgive her for not keeping her promise not to run against him if he was a candidate in 2024.
This Tuesday, after learning of his victory in New Hampshire, Trump urged her to withdraw from the race; however, she remains steadfast.
At 52 years old, the daughter of Indian immigrants and married to a National Guard officer, Haley is considered the darling of the U.S. Republican Party’s faction that wishes Trump’s days to be a thing of the past, embodying conservative values. However, the electorate seems more drawn to the “chaos” that Trump represents for the country, as she herself has described it.
“The worst-kept secret in politics is how badly the Democrats want to run against Donald Trump,” Haley said in New Hampshire. “A Trump nomination is a Biden victory,” she added.