Nan McCurdy *, January 13th 2022
Family in Bismarck Martinez Housing neighborhood watch the inauguration and
swear to fight with all their strength to overthrow hunger, poverty and backwardness
On January 10 Daniel Ortega was inaugurated president and Rosario Murillo, Vice President. The central event in the Plaza of the Revolution was accompanied by Sandinistas celebrating in almost every town with big-screen displays of the inauguration. Once he had been sworn in, with the presidential sash across his chest, Daniel repeated his action from 2007, 2012 and 2017: He took off his sash and then symbolically handed it to the people: El Pueblo Presidente – the People are President. The crowd broke out in wild cheers. He asked tens of thousands of Sandinistas gathered in the 153 municipalities of the country to swear to fight with all their strength to overthrow hunger, poverty and backwardness.
"Let's go forward…building peace to fight poverty, building peace so that there can be roads and highways. building peace so that families can feel secure; their children can feel secure in their work; they can feel secure in having a dignified life. That is our commitment, dear Nicaraguan brothers and sisters, we are all in this and that is why we say the people are president", he exclaimed emotionally.
Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and Cuban President Miguel Diaz Canel accompanied the inauguration to the obvious delight of the crowd who cheered ecstatically when each of them arrived. President Ortega actually left the area and went out to greet each of them.
Along with official representatives of dozens of countries including Honduras, Mexico, China, India and Iran – countries that represent 2.5 billion people, there were also more than 300 hundred journalists and solidarity activists from 21 nations accompanying the inauguration. "Here are delegates from many governments that have been mentioned, peoples, brothers, friendly peoples and where the European governments or the Yankee government do not send delegates… what greater pride than to have here as representatives of the North American people, of the European peoples, citizens, dignified men and women who fight in their homelands for true dignity, for the true independence of their own countries and for a true democracy to be installed in their own countries," said Ortega.
"What better and more worthy representative can the American people have than Brian Willson. They [the US] threw the military train at him and it was filmed, and they destroyed his legs and where were the human rights [organizations]… and who condemned that crime… if it is the same Yankee government that promoted those crimes," he emphasized. Willson wrote: “President Ortega spoke for more than an hour about the new silk road agreements with China, the continued history of US imperialism, and the continued advances of the Sandinista Nicaragua revolution. He needed no notes, no teleprompters - such a contrast with US Presidents. He spoke straight from his heart and experiences without any pauses.”
President Ortega indicated that Nicaragua and the People's Republic of China had a historic meeting where they signed four cooperation treaties, highlighting the Memorandum of Understanding on cooperation in the framework of the Silk Road Economic Belt. "The Chinese Revolution and the Sandinista Revolution have the same path, the same destiny, which is to end poverty," Ortega stressed.
The president demanded the end of the US blockade and sanctions on Cuba and Venezuela: "And if there is any respect for democracy when the immense majority of the peoples of the world are saying that the blockade should cease, then the Yankee government should comply if it has a shred of respect for international law and cease the blockade against Cuba, and cease the blockade against the sister Republic of Venezuela. A criminal blockade where they persecute them, prosecute them, invent crimes against them, simply because they seek to guarantee food for Venezuelan families.”
President Ortega makes it clear that they will continue to carve out a new path of prosperity for the people with extraordinary advances and that they will do this specifically because they are no longer willing to be a colony of the United States.
“We will continue to fight with dignity, always defending the homeland, always defending sovereignty, because only with sovereignty, with dignity, with conscience, is it possible to achieve the great victories.
* Nan McCurdy covered the inauguration for Alliance for Global Justice – NicaNotes