Foreign Digest: Nicaragua, Venezuela and Georgia

Nicaragua: The United States has sanctioned Russian officials for facilitating repression in Nicaragua. The Central American State is led by a Marxist Sandinista former dictator who was elected and broke his promise to respect Nicaragua’s liberty and representative government by not tolerating dissent and free and fair elections. Nicaragua was a Soviet ally during the Cold War. Russian tyrant Vladimir Putin is an ex-Soviet intelligence officer intent on restoring the Soviet Union and who opposes the United States and the West as obstacles to his imperialist ambitions. Putin thus makes allies of adversaries of the West and of Western values of liberty and representative government. I had posted earlier this month on how Communist Cuba is similarly complicit in repression by Venezuela’s Socialist regime, as Russia, Cuba and Venezuela are part of what I call the Axis of Rogues. Venezuela: The leading opposition presidential candidate, as well as two other candidates, are calling for the invitation to the European Union for election observers for Venezuela’s presidential elections later this month to be restored, after the Socialist regime-appointed assembly had revoked the invitation. The Socialists have ruled the South American State since being elected in 2000 and becoming increasingly authoritarian, violating human rights and undermining representative government. As I posted, after the popular opposition candidate was barred by the regime from holding office, the opposition united around a former ambassador. But fears persist about the Venezuelan dictatorship’s fairness in conducting the election, especially after the opposition won a supermajority in the national assembly elections six years ago and the Socialist regime denied some of them their seats and the supplanted the assembly with its own legislative body. The United States and many of its Latin American and Western allies recognized the assembly leader as Venezuela’s President, who invoked a constitutional provision to declare himself President of the Republic. The Venezuelan regime had agreed to a deal mediated last year by Norway to allow free and fair elections, but have reneged on their promises. Georgia: The Georgian Parliament recently approved the Russian-style bill to label media organizations and nongovernmental organizations as “pursing the interest of a foreign power” if they receive more than 20% of their funding from abroad that I had posted about last month. The bill, which has sparked massive protests and condemnation from the United States and the European Union, which Georgia is a candidate to join, was vetoed by Georgia’s President as unconstitutional and against European standards. But the pro-Russian ruling party is expected to override her veto. The bill would be used to curtail professional media’s use of the freedom of the printing press and the freedom of expression of critics whose organizations receive international funding, even though the media and NGOs are already subject to transparency and auditing, which is the pretext of the bill’s supporters. The bill was withdrawn last year after mass protests, but this time the Georgian Government cracked down on dissent violently. A similar law in Russia has been used by the tyrannical regime of ex-Soviet intelligence officer Vladimir Putin to increase his authoritarianism by using the old Russian smear of any critics as “foreign stooges.” The former Soviet Republic of Georgia was invaded by Russia in 2008 when Russia seized two breakaway territories and then made further encroachments onto Georgian territory. Putin, who is trying to restore the Soviet Union, opposes any move by former Soviet Republics or satellites toward the West. If enacted, the “foreign agents” law would jeopardize Georgia’s EU membership ambitions and its candidacy to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the defensive pact led by the United States. Russia, which interferes politically in foreign States, opposes the EU and NATO.