In its editorial on Friday of last week (August 21), the newspaper La Prensa Gráfica of El Salvador commented on that country’s government stance during the OAS vote to convene an extraordinary meeting of foreign ministers to address the escalating political crisis in Nicaragua. The Salvadoran ambassador voted in favor of the call, but remained silent regarding the situation in Nicaragua, unlike the representatives of other OAS member states who condemned the totalitarian drift of the Nicaraguan dictatorship and its contempt for the democratic values of the Inter-American system.
In its editorial reflection, La Prensa Gráfica acknowledges that “El Salvador is a small country with an economy dependent on stable foreign relations—remittances, cooperation, trade—and cannot afford the luxury of accumulating diplomatic friction that could prove counterproductive for its citizens.” In this regard, it notes that “the most instrumental reading is that the government prefers to maintain distance from multilateral forums that could establish argumentative precedents on democracy and human rights applicable to its own actions as well.”
However, the Salvadoran newspaper specifies that “it is not necessary for El Salvador to be present in every multilateral initiative that arises in the OAS or other instances, but it is necessary that its stance be reasoned and that the criteria for intervening remain the same inside and outside these organizations: the full defense of the Inter-American Democratic Charter, which defines the essential elements of democracy, notably including respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms; the holding of periodic, free, and fair elections; and transparency, probity, and the exercise of power based on the rule of law, among others.”
All those values, principles, and democratic institutions that constitute the foundation and condition of existence for the Inter-American system do not exist in Nicaragua. And their absence, coupled with the subordination of the Ortega-Murillo dictatorship to the strategic interests of Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea, poses a serious existential threat to all democracies in the Americas.
This situation should also concern the governments of Brazil and Mexico, which, being left-leaning and ideologically aligned with the Sandinista regime, refuse to approve actions against the Nicaraguan dictatorship, maliciously shielding themselves behind the international law principle of non-interference in the internal affairs of other States.
In reality, the principle of non-interference or non-intervention is a fundamental rule of international law that prohibits States from intervening, directly or indirectly, in the internal or external affairs of another country. Its purpose is to protect sovereignty, political independence, and equality among nations. Therefore, all member States of the United Nations are bound to respect it, even if in practice some or many do not.
Yet, equally, all States of the Americas are bound to respect and comply with the principles of the Inter-American Democratic Charter, which are also norms of international law. Chief among them is that “representative democracy is indispensable for the stability, peace, and development of the region.”
By adopting the Inter-American Democratic Charter, all States of the Americas (including Mexico, Brazil, El Salvador, and Nicaragua) consented that the breakdown of the democratic order in any one of them must activate legitimate pressure mechanisms on the part of the international community, thereby overriding the shield of “non-intervention.”
The Inter-American Charter defines as essential elements of representative democracy, “among others, respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms; access to and exercise of power in accordance with the rule of law; the holding of periodic, free, fair elections based on secret ballot and universal suffrage as an expression of the sovereignty of the people; the pluralistic system of political parties and organizations; and the separation and independence of public powers.”
And the Charter mandates the OAS to act resolutely whenever a breakdown of the democratic order occurs in any country of the regional system. Such is the case of Nicaragua, where that breakdown, in addition to being evident, is admitted by the dictatorship of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo with the utmost brazenness, defying the international democratic community.
The people of Nicaragua are defenseless against the dictatorship. They need the solidary support of the Inter-American democratic community, which must also act in defense of its own regional security, seriously threatened by the dictatorial regime of Ortega and Murillo.
