SÃO PAULO, SP (FOLHAPRESS) – The Nicaraguan dictatorship removed the country’s ambassador to Brazil, Lorena del Cármen Martínez, from her post, according to a decision published in the Nicaraguan Official Gazette this Thursday (16).
Although the reasons are not clear, the movement draws attention because it occurred days after Brasilia expressed, at the UN, concern about the growing repression of the regime of Daniel Ortega.
According to diplomatic sources heard by the report, the removal constitutes a usual rotation, and Martínez, in office since 2013, should be replaced soon. A name would have already been aired, but it still depends on approval from Brazil, through the process known as agrément — a diplomatic document that indicates the host government’s agreement with the nomination for an embassy.
Managua also appointed Gabriel Osmani Ace Zepeda as Minister of Consular Functions in Brazil. In the diplomatic hierarchy, he will be a kind of chargé d’affaires and will assume command of the representation on a temporary basis until a new holder is appointed.
The change would be part of a series of exchanges carried out by the diplomacy of the Ortega regime. The Nicaraguan ambassador to South Korea was also removed from his post, as was the country’s representative in Panama. The latter had his exit announced this Wednesday (15) — Panama is among the countries that offered nationality to Nicaraguans expatriated by the dictatorship.
Brazil waved in the same direction at the beginning of the month at the UN Human Rights Council. Ambassador Tovar da Silva Nunes said that he views with “extreme concern” the decision to expatriate the dissidents and the news of human rights violations in the country. The representative also stated that he is available to receive expatriates, although it is not clear what procedure will be adopted.
In early February, the Ortega-Murillo dictatorship inaugurated the expatriation policy with 222 political prisoners who were expelled from the country and sent to the US. On that occasion, the National Assembly, dominated by allies of Ortega, approved in a single day a constitutional reform to allow the withdrawal of nationality from citizens. The measurement was repeated with another 94 opponents days later.
Brazil had been criticized for not expressing itself emphatically about the arbitrariness of Ortega, a leader who, after fighting the Somoza dictatorship in the 1970s, organized his own authoritarian regime.
Even so, Chancellor Mauro Vieira acknowledged, in a recent interview with Folha de S. Paulo, that Managua is no longer a democracy. Some PT wings are close to the Sandinista National Liberation Front, although some of them have distanced themselves from Ortega’s party.
The expatriation policy deepened the regime’s isolation. Last Sunday, Ortega ordered the closure of the Vatican embassy in Managua and the Nicaraguan embassy at the headquarters of the Catholic Church — with whom the regime is at arm’s length.
The decision was taken two days after the release of an interview in which Pope Francis claims that the leader suffers from an “imbalance” and compares his regime to the communist dictatorship in the Soviet Union and the Nazi regime of Adolf Hitler.