Unusual: to give a reward to a Nicaraguan, it will be necessary to request an authorization from the regime of Daniel Ortega

The Nicaraguan regime, led by Sandinista Daniel Ortega, will henceforth control all international awards and recognitions that Nicaraguan citizens obtain or deserve abroad, according to a presidential decree published in the Official Journal, The Gazette.

Countries or organizations that decide to award an award or recognition to a Nicaraguan citizen previously will have to seek the authorization of the Nicaraguan regime, according to the decree of President Ortega, which entered into force this Friday.

“The government, foreign state, international body or institution that wishes to award a prize, decoration or recognition to a Nicaraguan natural or legal person, must first seek the consent of the Government of Nicaragua through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, so that it can grant the corresponding approval in terms of reciprocity “, established Ortega in the decree.

Until now the Executive Branch did not explain the reasons for the decree, who in one of his paragraphs recalls that the President of Nicaragua “He may award honorary orders and decorations to national citizens or other nationalities.

The most awarded are the critics of Ortega

Among the Nicaraguans who have received the most awards and other international accolades since Ortega’s return to power in 2007 are writers Sergio Ramírez and Gioconda Belli., as well as the late Trappist poet and priest Ernesto Cardenal (1925-2020), all critics of the Sandinista regime.

Ramírez has received awards in Argentina, Chile, Spain and France, among which stands out the Cervantes 2017, the most prestigious for a writer after the Nobel Prize.

The day when Ramírez received the Cervantes, The writer appeared in a black tie at the Auditorium of the University of Alcalá de Henares, in mourning for those killed in armed attacks on anti-government protests in 2018.

Clear, which maintains constant criticism of Ortega in its social networks, has been awarded in Germany, Chile, Colombia, Spain, Mexico, the Netherlands and Peru, including the Prize for the novel Mario Vargas Llosa.

Cardinal, for its part, received honors in Chile, Spain, France, Mexico, Dominican Republic and Uruguay, among which stands out the 2012 Reina Sofia Prize for Ibero-American Poetry and the order Legion of honor in the rank of officer, awarded by the French government in 2013.

One of Nicaragua’s best-known recently awarded figures is another critic of Ortega, journalist Carlos Fernando Chamorro, brother of the opposition presidential candidate and currently detained Cristiana Chamorro, son of former president Violeta Barrios de Chamorro, which received the Ortega y Gasset 2021 award.

The three award-winning critics of Ortega who are still alive (Ramírez, Belli and Chamorro) reside outside Nicaragua for security reasons or to avoid being detained amid a wave of arrests that the authorities have unleashed against opposition leaders and independent professionals over the past two months, ahead of the November elections.

The president, about to turn 76, a former Sandinista guerrilla who coordinated a board of directors from 1979 to 1984 and first presided over the country between 1985 and 1990, he accused the opposition leaders of trying to overthrow him with the support of the United States and called them “criminals”.

Ortega is running for his fifth five-year term, the fourth in a row and the second with his wife, Vice-President Rosario Murillo, in the November elections.

(With information from EFE)

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