Daniel Ortega: we love our tyrants

Nicaragua's done a number of good things to improve its image in the region and around the world in recent years. But it does not look like Daniel Ortega's embrace of dictators and tyrants will ever change. From Tim Rogers at the Nicaragua Dispatch:

But kidding aside, the Sandinistas’ repeated defense of anti-democratic regimes and its sadly servile relationship with Russia and Venezuela is an embarrassment that’s harmful to the country’s standing in the world. Not only is it bad PR to pal around with international outcasts, it’s also an inaccurate representation of the open, embracing and western-friendly country that Nicaragua has become.

If you were to have visited Nicaragua this week, you would have seen U.S. tourists, Canadian backpackers and European expats. You would not have seen any goose-stepping North Korean tourists, Syrian surfers, or South Ossetian investors. If you looked really hard you would have seen the only Russian tourists visiting the country: a small and disheveled-looking delegation from the Duma, whose visit got way more play in the official media than it deserved.

Nicaragua — in many ways — is a country that’s coming into its own. It’s growing slowly but surely into a maturing destination for tourism and foreign investment. The Nicaragua brand name is now starting to be associated with good things, not just war, poverty and severe dysfunction. Sandinista handlers needs to do more to encourage those positive changes, rather than risking it all by palling around with the nutjobs of the world.

Instead of glad-handing with glassy-eyed Russians and blowhard Bolivarian basket cases, or courting meaningless friendships with obscure breakaway Georgian republics whose names I have to google every time I write about them, the Sandinista government should do more to improve relations with its immediate neighbors in Central America and other nations whose friendships actually contribute to Nicaragua’s growth and wellbeing. Nicaragua should also do more to reach out to the truly progressive and prosperous countries in Latin America, such as Uruguay, Brazil and Chile.

Nicaragua needs to look in the mirror and remind itself that it has a lot to offer the world. The country is a natural beauty, full of innovative, intelligent, industrious and friendly people. Nicaragua deserves to have better friends — and it certainly has no excuse to continue hanging out down by the train tracks with all the international misfits, pipeheads and crackpots.

Daniel and the Sandinistas liked to proclaim a non-aligned foreign policy in the 1980s even though they appear to have felt more comfortable in the socialist camp. And, today, even with all the important changes, they still appear to be more comfortable, at least when in comes to world affairs, in the non-democratic camp. A non-aligned foreign policy (?) in support of some of the world's worst regimes continues to be a black mark on the Sandinista record.