As the Trump administration’s year-long coup attempt against Venezuela spirals out in failure, the U.S. government has taken aim at Nicaragua with increasing ferocity, in a bid to topple its democratically elected, leftist Sandinista government.
Washington’s pressure escalated further on March 9 when the U.S. House of Representatives passed a bipartisan resolution in a voice vote without any opposition that demanded more sanctions and aggressive actions against the Nicaraguan government of President Daniel Ortega.
This bill — which received no coverage in the English-language corporate media — refers to Nicaragua’s elected government as the “Ortega regime,” echoing the bellicose rhetoric of the right-wing opposition.
Video of the congressional session shows that the resolution was pushed through on a voice vote in just around eight minutes. There was no debate, and a grand total of zero members of Congress spoke in opposition.
The regime-change action in the House followed numerous rounds of suffocating U.S. sanctions on Nicaragua, a small Central American country of just around 6 million people.
In fact, the behavior of U.S. legislators in the latest vote mirrored one in December 2018, when not one member of Congress spoke up against the passage of the Nicaraguan Investment and Conditionality Act (NICA). That bill hit Nicaragua with crippling economic restrictions, preventing international financial institutions from providing loans or assistance to the country’s government.
U.S. sanctions have already caused the deaths of tens of thousands of civilians in Venezuela and Iran. Now that Nicaragua is in the crosshairs, the damage of Washington’s economic warfare has only just begun.
Kurgen
Article URL : https://consortiumnews.com/2020/03/15/us-house-rams-through-nicaragua-regime-change-bill-with-zero-opposition/