The General Assembly of the Organization of American States, which held its 56th regular session in Panama City from Monday through Wednesday of this week, produced encouraging results for Nicaraguans — that is, for those Nicaraguans who long for freedom and democracy and continue to fight for them. For the co-dictators and their supporters, it was another serious political blow from the international community.
The first achievement for democratic Nicaragua was the Declaration on the Situation in Nicaragua, approved by the representatives of every OAS member state, without exception. Even Costa Rica’s foreign minister, with his forceful rejection of Nicaragua’s dictatorship, dispelled the doubts created by an earlier ill-advised statement from the Costa Rican president.
The OAS General Assembly’s declaration on Nicaragua strongly denounces the dictatorship’s abuses against the Nicaraguan people and demands that the Ortega-Murillo regime take the necessary steps to restore democracy promptly. It is a sign that time is running out for Nicaragua’s dictators.
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The truth is that the OAS has not stopped speaking out on Nicaragua since 2018, when the Ortega-Murillo dictatorship unleashed bloody repression and began its full descent into totalitarianism. But as time passed, and as other grave problems came to dominate the concerns of the international community, it became clear that international attention to the humanitarian and political tragedy suffered by Nicaraguans had diminished. There was a real fear that the OAS General Assembly in Panama would limit itself to a passing mention of Nicaragua in a broader declaration. Fortunately for Nicaraguans, that did not happen.
It is important to emphasize that the OAS’s renewed attention to Nicaragua was due in large part to the tireless efforts of Nicaragua’s opposition in exile. That opposition also presented to the hemisphere’s democratic community a clear image and a firm commitment to unity in action, setting aside ideological and identity-based differences that are normal and legitimate, but that must become secondary when the task is to unite wills and forces in pursuit of a higher objective.
It is true that the opposition did not succeed in having the OAS General Assembly in Panama expressly reaffirm the illegitimacy of Nicaragua’s regime, after the organization declared in November 2021 that the fraudulent elections staged by the Ortega dictatorship were illegitimate.
But that declaration of illegitimacy is implicit in the OAS General Assembly’s demand that Nicaragua’s regime “adopt measures that enable the legitimate and democratic exercise of power.” This clearly means that political power in Nicaragua is not being exercised legitimately, because it is not democratic and because its origin is spurious, devoid of any legitimacy.
It was also highly significant that the representatives of opposition groups, platforms and social organizations who traveled to Panama to present their shared democratic demands to OAS members publicly declared their willingness to remain united, or in coalition, in order to continue carrying out joint actions in the struggle against the dictatorship — until victory is achieved.
Unity in action among all opposition representatives, or at least most of them, is an indispensable condition so that, when the time comes, they can remove the dictatorship from power. That is what the National Opposition Union, or UNO, accomplished in 1990. Not all opposition parties joined it, but enough did to form the critical mass necessary to defeat the dictatorial regime.
