Nicaragua threatened Costa Rica, Guatemala, Panama and Dominican Republic with taking “some measures” against him for opposing the election of former Nicaraguan Chancellor Denis Moncada as the new secretary general of the Central American Integration System (SICA), according to an official note released on Friday, November 29.
“We have received his disrespectful and taxive today’s Joint Note, November 28, 2024, which highlights his continued, illegal and improper blockade of Nicaragua, according to all the treaties and regulations governing the Central American Integration System,” said Nicaraguan Foreign Minister Valdrack Jaentschke, in a note addressed to his colleagues from Costa Rica, Guatemala, Panama and the Dominican Republic, and to all SICA governments.
“In the face of this unusual insubordination of governments and Foreign Ministers that do not respond to the law that governs us according to the Jurisprudence of our System, Nicaragua is considering some measures that we will communicate in due course, on the contempt in which the subscriber countries of the Note have shamefully fallen, which also deny, absolute and insanely, the power of our country to appoint our own candidates,” he continued.
According to Jaentschke, former chancellor and retired general Denis Moncada “has had and has the recognition of the governments, peoples and countries of the world, recognition and respect that cannot be ignored and/or denied by those who subscribe to this absurd communication.”
IN THIS MOMENTO
They invite to rethink
“We call for a rethink on what we consider to be contrary to all the Presidential Agreements that have governed and govern SICA, including the national sovereignty of our countries,” Nicaragua’s Foreign Minister urgedNicaragua.
Referring to the note by Costa Rica, Guatemala, Panama and the Dominican Republic, Jaentschke indicated that it “exhibits a denialist, exclusionary and discriminatory position, which is unacceptable from all points of view and that we are forced to denounce.”
Three weeks ago, the government presided over by Daniel Ortega proposed a new list of candidates as the new secretary general of the SICA, headed by former chancellor Moncada, and also composed of Sandinista MP Arling Patricia Alonso Gómez, and the Minister of the Family, Johana Flores, after two previous lists presented did not reach consensus.
The previous tern was composed of Congresswoman Alonso; the Minister of the Interior, María Amelia Coronel Kinloch; and the presidential adviser on health issues and former health minister, Sonia Castro, all sanctioned by the United States and in the case of Castro in addition to Canada, the European Union, the United Kingdom and Switzerland, for violation of human rights.
The first tern, presented on November 16, 2023, was headed by Jaentschke himself and included Violeta Irías Nelson, of the Office of the Procurator for the Defense of Human Rights, and the official deputy Irís Marina Montenegro Blandón.
One year without Secretary-General of SICA
Nicaragua, which holds the temporary presidency of that body, had convened an extraordinary meeting of the SICA Council of Foreign Ministers on 15 November “in order to advance this process,” present the new list and interview the candidates proposed by Managua, which was not held due to lack of consensus.
The General Secretariat of the SICA has been vacant since Nicaraguan lawyer Werner Vargas resigned from office for the period 2022-2026 in mid-November 2023, for which he was appointed as Nicaragua’s proposalNicaragua.
Nicaragua has also denounced and rejected the “usurpation” of the General Secretariat of the SICA by a “Executive Directorate” of that body, which according to Managua has asked the governments of the region to “analyze a proposal for an agenda and a draft budget of a General Secretariat that does not exist because it is acephata.”
The SICA, created in Tegucigalpa in 1991, is made up of Belize, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama and the Dominican Republic as full members, while Mexico, the United States and other countries have the status of regional observers.
This article was translated after appearing in Prensa Libre