Whose Democracy is the United States Promoting in Nicaragua?

The U.S. government has been flexing its muscles in Nicaragua to defeat Daniel Ortega, candidate of the National Sandinista Liberation Front (FSLN), in that country’s November presidential elections. Ortega, president during the Sandinista revolution in the 1980s, is running for president for the fourth time since his first defeat in 1990.

As in other parts of the world, the United States is touting its support of democracy as the justification for intervening in the internal affairs of a sovereign state.

In a recent interview in the Nicaraguan magazine Confidencial, U.S. Ambassador Paul Trivelli stated,

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