Nicaragua has said it has completed its withdrawal from the Organization of American States (OAS) despite the regional bloc saying the move was not allowed for another year. Nicaragua’s Foreign Minister Denis Moncada announced on Sunday the immediate break from the organization and the closure of the OAS’s offices in the capital, Managua. President Daniel Ortega had announced the Latin American country’s withdrawal in November last year. That came after the OAS criticized the fairness of elections that saw Ortega win a fourth consecutive term amid a months-long crackdown on opposition figures. The OAS had said the withdrawal could not go into effect until 2023 because Nicaragua was an active member at the time of the announcement. Still, Moncada said that as of Sunday, Nicaragua was no longer part “of all the deceitful mechanisms of this monstrosity, the so-called Permanent Council, so-called commissions, so-called meetings, so-called Summit of the Americas.”
In a statement, the OAS said Nicaragua remained a “full member and must comply with all its commitments” until the end of its current membership period. It called on Managua to “respect” its relationship with the bloc, which was formed in 1948 and has focused for decades on election integrity across the Americas. For its part, regional neighbor Venezuela—which officially withdrew from OAS in 2020—quickly hailed Nicaragua’s resignation as “courageous,” calling the body “an instrument of US imperialism.” Relations between Nicaragua and the OAS have been increasingly fraught in recent years. In 2016, the organization sent a mostly unsuccessful mission to Nicaragua to mediate amid opposition accusations of fraud in that year’s election, which saw Ortega win his third consecutive term as president, with his wife Rosario Murillo becoming vice president.
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