Democracy for Sale?

Democracy for Sale?

OPINION BY: Hem Kumar September 2026

The United States is preparing to use the Organization of American States to isolate Nicaragua after Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo pushed through constitutional changes designed to extinguish what remained of democratic competition in the country. The changes reportedly ban most political opposition, target parties with foreign funding, and extend the presidential term from 6 to 7 years—renewable, of course.

Washington’s condemnation is justified. Ortega’s regime has earned no presumption of good faith.

Since the 2018 protests, Nicaragua has endured a brutal and sustained campaign of political repression: demonstrators killed, opponents imprisoned, journalists silenced, civic groups dismantled, universities shuttered, religious institutions harassed, and hundreds of citizens forced into exile or stripped of nationality.

.There is no credible democratic defense of this record. Ortega and Murillo are not protecting a revolution from foreign sabotage; they are protecting their hold on power from the judgment of their own people.

That is the central indictment.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio says Ortega and Murillo are waging a “war on democracy” that threatens the stability and prosperity of the hemisphere. True enough. But where does that standard go when Washington pursues enormous commercial arrangements with Venezuela’s ruling apparatus, represented by Delcy Rodríguez?

Rosario Murillo and Daniel Ortega

Rodríguez is not the product of a transparent, competitive, internationally credible electoral mandate. She did not rise to authority through a free contest in which Venezuelans had an unfettered ability to organize, campaign, vote, and see their votes respected. Yet the United States has demonstrated its willingness to conduct high-stakes energy and economic business with the Venezuelan state when oil markets, migration pressures, geopolitical calculations, or corporate interests dictate it.

This is not a demand that the United States refuse all contact with Caracas. Diplomacy is not a purity test. Governments sometimes must negotiate with adversaries and authoritarian governments. They do so to secure the release of prisoners, protect citizens, reduce migration pressures, prevent armed conflict, stabilize energy markets, or advance humanitarian access.

The problem is not diplomacy. The problem is hypocrisy dressed as principle.

If Washington wishes to deal with Venezuela pragmatically, it should say so plainly. It should acknowledge that national interest is influencing its choices. It should not then mount a moral crusade against Nicaragua as though the United States applies one consistent rule across the hemisphere: democratic legitimacy for all, or preferential treatment for none.

The distinction becomes even more glaring because the same tools used to justify pressure on Nicaragua—political exclusion, institutional capture, suppression of dissent, and the erosion of electoral legitimacy—are the very concerns that have long defined the Venezuelan crisis. The United States cannot insist that Ortega’s manipulation of institutions makes him untouchable while accepting arrangements with officials empowered by a political system Washington itself has repeatedly described as authoritarian and illegitimate.

That is not principled statecraft. It is selective enforcement.

And selective enforcement has consequences. It gives Ortega the propaganda he needs. It allows Managua to dismiss legitimate criticism as another exercise in US imperial preference. It reinforces the claim—frequently made by authoritarian governments—that Washington’s concern for rights and elections evaporates whenever oil, security cooperation, migration control, or commercial access is on the table.

Ortega’s arguments may be cynical, but US inconsistency makes them easier to sell.

The OAS Test

The OAS now faces its own credibility test.

Nicaragua formally withdrew from the organization, a process completed in 2023 after years of conflict over the regime’s human rights record. That means the OAS has limited direct leverage over Managua. It cannot simply compel democratic reform through a resolution or restore political rights through condemnation alone.

But it can still matter.

The organization can create a clear hemispheric record of Nicaragua’s democratic collapse. It can coordinate diplomatic pressure. It can call on member states to limit normal political engagement with the Ortega-Murillo government. It can support independent documentation of abuses, amplify the voices of exiled Nicaraguans, defend political prisoners and their families, and press for the restoration of citizenship and civil rights to those arbitrarily stripped of both.

Most importantly, it can refuse to normalize the destruction of an entire political system.

Yet the OAS must avoid becoming merely a stage on which Washington performs outrage against an adversary it has already chosen to punish. If the body is to retain authority, its members must make clear that their concern is not obedience to the United States. Their concern must be the basic democratic rights of Nicaraguans: the right to organize, speak, worship, report, protest, compete for office, and remove a government peacefully.

That standard cannot be negotiable.

 A Hemispheric Double Standard

The United States has enormous influence in the Americas. With that influence comes a choice.

It can support democracy consistently, even when doing so complicates energy deals, migration agreements, security arrangements, and corporate ambitions. Or it can continue applying democratic standards selectively—harshly against governments deemed hostile, flexibly against governments deemed useful.

The second path may yield short-term transactions. It will not create long-term credibility.

Washington should condemn Ortega without qualification. It should press Nicaragua’s government to restore political pluralism, free political prisoners, halt persecution of journalists and civic organizations, and permit genuinely competitive elections. It should support Nicaraguan civil society, refugees, and exiles without imposing suffering on ordinary citizens already trapped under an increasingly authoritarian state.

But it should also stop pretending that democracy is an inviolable principle when confronting Ortega and an optional consideration when making billion-dollar arrangements with Venezuela’s unelected governing class.

The people of Nicaragua deserve more than rhetorical solidarity. They deserve coherent action.

And the hemisphere deserves something better than a democracy doctrine that changes according to who controls the oil, who controls the migration routes, and who is useful to Washington at a given moment.

The United States can be the leader of a principled democratic coalition—or it can be the manager of a transactional sphere of influence. It cannot convincingly be both.