Fabrizio Casari, Altrenotizie, 19 de noviembre 2021
https://www.altrenotizie.org/primo-piano/9467-nicaragua-addio-all-osa.h…
Another act of blatant interference by the OAS in Nicaragua's internal affairs has forced Managua to leave the organization led by Luis Almagro. Nicaragua does so in response to the approval of another illegitimate motion against its sovereignty, drawn up on the basis of exclusive political hostility and ideological acrimony, rather than plausible and truthful arguments.
The decision to abandon a forum that, defying all decency, continually meddles in Nicaragua's internal affairs, even though it is not at all a forum of international jurisprudence, looks as timely as it was inevitable. Nicaragua, in fact, joins Venezuela and Cuba in abandoning the OAS and, consequently, in disregarding it as a political entity representing the Latin American continent. Far from complying with its statutes, the OAS is in fact an instrument of aggression against all the progressive and socialist countries of Latin America, a sort of Latin American office of the U.S. State Department, designed to directly involve member countries in the implementation of U.S. policy at the continental level.
The confrontation between the OAS and the Nicaraguan government, already apparent for several years, had already escalated following the U.S. campaign against Nicaragua, Venezuela, Cuba and Bolivia initiated by Trump and continued under Biden, and among its consequences was Nicaragua's refusal to accept electoral observation by the OAS, the U.S. and the EU.
The decision not to invite the OAS as an electoral observer has several explanations, all of them convincing. It results from the declared and manifest preconceived and opportunist hostility, devoid of substantive argument, making the Nicaraguan government the object of repeated attacks as unjustifiable in terms of international law as of the OAS statute itself. After all, the OAS had already decided, even before the elections were held, that it would not recognize the result. So what would it have observed?
The growing interference of the body, which has transformed Nicaragua from a member country into a target of political attacks ordered by Washington, is intolerable. The OAS, which has never made any secret of being on the side of the coup plotters, seemed increasingly convinced that it could exert political influence in the country, trying to set itself up as the supreme interlocutor of the entire electoral process at the legislative, regulatory and normative levels. A misappropriation of Nicaraguan national sovereignty that the Sandinista government would never grant to anyone.
The repeated OAS intervention in support of the failed coup attempt of 2018 was also intolerable and clearly indicated the framework in which any observation would take place. Including, for example, the definition as "opposition candidates" of the infamous Chamorro circus, dedicated to money laundering and coup-plotting, without them ever having been formally designated and without even having a political party. The OAS was clearly imitating the Nicaraguan ecclesiastical hierarchy's role during the failed coup attempt: pretending to be independent arbiters while in fact leading one of the two sides. So, why should the Sandinista government have invited and invested with international credibility a body that, unable to claim the victory of the right, would have tried to invalidate the electoral process so as not to see Comandante Ortega win?
Almagro's role in the elections.
But it is not only in Nicaragua that the OAS has proven to lack political neutrality and legal validity: remember that, in terms of free elections, it recognized the coup leader Micheletti in Honduras, the coup leader Áñez in Bolivia (who took office precisely with the support of the OAS) and continues to welcome as Venezuela's representative of Venezuela a clown named Guaidò, never a presidential candidate and never elected, only nominated president by a tweet from former U.S. Vice President Mike Pence. It is, to say the least, a completely ideologized concept of democracy and of how an electoral process should be: a circus the first, a farce the second.
Even before the elections, when evaluating the conditions of access to the candidacies in the respective countries, the OAS shows itself as an active political actor in the electoral dispute: silent on the politicized, criminal use of the law (lawfare) against all the leaders of the Latin American left, but finger pointing at Venezuela or Nicaragua. In short, the OAS fulfills the mission assigned to it by Washington: to provide political and faux-technical-legal legitimacy to the fascist governments acceptable to Washington and to ignore and define as illegitimate all those of progressive leanings.
The same can be said of the question of human rights, the tattered and instrumental banner of the new US interventionism in the Latin American continent: the Colombian massacre of opponents is deliberately ignored in order to accuse Nicaragua of having arrested eight criminals; Chile's Piñera is absolved of having ordered the shooting of student demonstrators in the eyes, but Ortega is blamed for reacting to the failed coup attempt.
Far beyond Nicaragua, which despite everything has become the paradigm of abuse of prerogative and of the mistaken, arrogant role assumed by Luis Almagro, the decision in Managua will have repercussions throughout the OASstructure. Already many countries resent the management of the organization as the mouthpiece of U.S. interests in the continent: Argentina, Mexico, Bolivia, El Salvador, are some of the countries that have most clearly expressed their disagreement with Almagro's performance and the value in itself of a body increasingly seen as inadequate and unreformable.
In fact, the emerging Latin American political framework calls into question the very existence of the OAS, effectively a victim of the United States' pretence of sustaining it as the continental tool for implementing White House decisions. On the other hand, the statute establishes that the OAS, which is 80% funded by the United States, can discuss the situation of all countries, but not that of the United States. Thus, they can judge everyone, but no one can judge them.
The OAS is not a multipolar forum, an association between different countries, or an instrument aimed at regional cooperation and the enhancement of the diversity of the continent within a framework of cooperation and mutual recognition: the OAS is, to all intents and purposes, the formal political instrument of U.S. domination over Latin America. The OAS structure also serves to give a veneer of multilateral partnership to what has always been a unipolar policy with centralized command. It gives an aura of democracy and shared responsibility to decisions that are solely Washington's, based on its strategic interests.
By leaving the OAS, Managua achieves a political result that will have positive consequences, since the decision deactivates Washington's plans for diplomatic and commercial isolation. By leaving the organization, Managua will not be subject to measures such as those provided for in the OAS Democratic Charter. Latin American countries will be free to decide their political, commercial and diplomatic relations with Managua. This gives the entire region the freedom to continue and even increase trade with Nicaragua, allowing their economies to access mutually beneficial agreements that would have been lost in the event of sanctions under the Democratic Charter. An important example is that of the Central American region, where Nicaragua is the main exporter of key food products for some (principally El Salvador) and the inescapable overland route for regional road trade. Likewise, the possible and very likely U.S. sanctions will bounce off the region's widespread and intertwined interests, as well as the diversity of Nicaragua's import and export portfolio.
Managua knows how to defend itself. Like Caracas and Havana, it is in effect a free university offering classes in dignity and independence, practicing disobedience to foreign interests and obedience to those of one's own country. Sovereignty is practiced not only for oneself, but also to distinguish oneself from those who practice servitude on a daily basis, begging on their knees for whatever stale bread crumbs may drop from the empire's table.
The OAS is now a little more than a copy of the low lifes known as the Lima Group. Sandinista Nicaragua is far from the spirit that animates the regional governments dancing only to the music played by their US owners. They have neither wanted or known how to listen to the reasons for independence, or for the pride of sovereignty. Those who live forever on their knees naturally have more in common with the ones crawling ahead of them than with those who proudly stand upright.