Nicaraguan Gov. Meets with Businessmen to Discuss Resuming Negotiations

Daniel Ortega and his wife and vice president, Rosario Murillo.  File photo: EFE/Jorge Torres

 

 

Cardinal Brenes and Apostolic Nuncio were at the meeting

“It is an important effort to open a door that has been closed for a long time,” says Jose Adan Aguerri, president of Cosep, the main private employer’s organization.

 

By Confidential

HAVANA TIMES – The regime of Daniel Ortega held a closed-door meeting with “representative entrepreneurs” from the private sector to “address important issues for the common good” of the country. The news of the meeting was published in the government media on Saturday afternoon.

According to the government’s press release, this exchange confirmed the need for an “understanding to start a negotiation” through an “inclusive, serious and frank” agreement.

Cardinal Leopoldo Brenes and the apostolic nuncio Waldemar Stanislaw were also present at the meeting.

Jose Adan Aguerri, president of the Superior Council of Private Enterprise (Cosep), told Confidencial that the meeting with the Government “is an important effort to open a door that has been closed for a long time.”

“It is an advance in the direction that an inclusive negotiation will be resumed for the good of the country. The presence of the Church and the Vatican through the Cardinal and the Nuncio accompanying this effort is considered very relevant,” said Aguerri.

The US ambassador to Nicaragua, Kevin Sullivan, published on his Twiiter account that the US Government welcomes the effort to re-establish negotiations between the Ortega administration and the representatives of civil society.

“Negotiations will require goodwill efforts to reach real solutions in real time for the people of Nicaragua,” added Sullivan.

Meeting with the OAS

This week, Ortega was visited by Gonzalo Koncke, chief of staff of the Secretary General of the Organization of American States (OAS), Luis Almagro.

Through a press release published on its website, the delegation of the General Secretariat of the OAS informed that the delegation arrived in the country at the initiative of “the Government of Nicaragua” in order to hold “exploratory talks regarding the situation in the country”.

The mission proposed the release of the [over 700] political prisoners, the need to count on progress in the electoral political process and the importance of considering the recommendations of the Inter-American System and other aspects that were not clarified in the press release.

However, Ortega told Koncke that “in his opinion detainees (political prisoners) have been subject to due process” and that the government’s intention is “to strengthen the electoral political process by 2021 within the framework of the Constitution and the law.”

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs informed that the meeting with the OAS was an exchange of information and perspectives on the situation of the country and on the importance of providing continuity in order to advance towards “electoral reforms and towards the presidential elections of 2021.”