26 de octubre 2024
Nicaragua and Venezuela were not included in the list of new partner countries in the BRICS emerging markets bloc during the XVI Summit of this organization held in Kazan, Russia, due to a veto from Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, according to Brazilian media.
The exclusion of the two countries happened after the Brazilian president pressured BRICS members to exclude them from the list, despite Nicaragua and Venezuela sending delegations and insisting on being considered.
In Nicaragua’s case, the regime of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo sent a mission led by Foreign Minister Valdrack Jaentschke and the dictator’s son, Laureano Ortega Murillo, while in Venezuela’s case, President Nicolas Maduro attended the summit in a last-minute announced trip.
Cuba, Bolivia, Algeria, Belarus, Indonesia, Malaysia, Nigeria, Thailand, Turkey, Kazakhstan, Uganda, Uzbekistan, and Vietnam are the 13 countries included as candidate partners to BRICS.
Brazil Cut Ties with Ortega
Brazil’s veto comes after Ortega decided to cut diplomatic ties with Lula da Silva’s government in retaliation for the Brazilian ambassador’s absence from the Sandinista Revolution celebration.
In early August 2024, Brazil’s president decided to expel Nicaragua’s ambassador, Fulvia Castro Matus, as a reciprocal move after Ortega ordered the expulsion of Brazil’s ambassador, Breno Souza da Costa.
Diplomatic relations between Nicaragua and Brazil have deteriorated since June 2023, when the Brazilian president tried to intercede for the release of Matagalpa’s bishop, Monsignor Rolando Alvarez, who was a political prisoner of the Ortega regime for more than 500 days, before being exiled to the Vatican in January 2024.
One of the dictatorial couple’s other sons, Juan Carlos Ortega Murillo, used his social media account on October 18, 2024, to criticize the Brazilian president.
“Dear Lula, communism is not a demon. It is an aspiration of the world’s most elevated souls, seeking equality and justice for all. That your age, fear, and comfort have distanced you from that goal is entirely your own doing,” he posted.
In Maduro’s case, he pursued an invitation from the BRICS “hoping to use it to bolster Venezuela’s legitimacy on the world stage,” according to international financial platform Bloomberg. However, Brazil vetoed him because it wants to distance itself from accusations of electoral fraud in Venezuela’s presidential elections, held in late July 2024.
Despite the rejection, Russian President Vladimir Putin assured that Maduro is the rightful winner of the elections and the “legitimate” president of the Latin American country during his final press conference at the BRICS summit.
Brazil, through presidential advisor Celso Amorim, assured that they set aside “moral or political issues” to establish the selection criteria, focusing on “objective” matters.
“We are not concerned about whether Venezuela joins or not, we are not making moral or political judgments about the country itself. BRICS includes countries with different types of regimes; the question is whether they have the political weight and relationships to contribute to a more peaceful world,” he stated.
What are the BRICS?
Nicaragua and Venezuela were among more than 30 countries that applied to join the geopolitical and economic alliance known as BRICS, named after the initials of its original founding members: Brazil, Russia, India, and China, who united in 2006. South Africa was added four years later.
BRICS countries represent about 27% of global GDP, 30% of the world’s territory, 43% of the world’s population, and 25% of foreign direct investments.
At the 2023 BRICS summit, held in South Africa, new members Ethiopia, the United Arab Emirates, Iran, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia were admitted.
Ortega Misses Out
In September 2023, Daniel Ortega declared his intention to join BRICS after the organization invited six new partners, to seek alternatives to evade sanctions imposed by the United States, Canada, and the European Union.
“The BRICS are growing and knocking at the door, and we are knocking at the door among them because that’s the multipolar world where people come together, from the most powerful countries to the most impoverished, to join forces in the fight for peace and against hunger,” Ortega stated.
During a visit to Russia in June 2024, Laureano Ortega Murillo, the dictatorial couple’s son and presidential advisor for investments, said Nicaragua had requested to join BRICS, seeing the organization as a lifeline to mitigate the impact of international sanctions and seek external resources.
“Nicaragua has set the goal of becoming a BRICS partner country and is negotiating with the organization’s member countries to have the opportunity to be part of this great family. We are confident that we will achieve it and become part of this great family working for a fairer and better world,” he declared.
Since June 15, 2023, the dictatorships of Nicaragua and Venezuela have expressed their commitment to de-dollarize their economies and draw closer to BRICS countries, as stated by Nicaragua’s Minister of Finance and Public Credit, Iván Acosta, and Venezuela’s Central Bank President, Calixto Ortega.
This article was published in Spanish in Confidencial and translated by Havana Times. To get the most relevant news from our English coverage delivered straight to your inbox, subscribe to The Dispatch.