Nicaraguan head Daniel Ortega. Photo: Google

By THE PULSE NEWS MEXICO STAFF

Despite the fact that Mexico’s Foreign Relations Secretariat (SRE) had announced over the weekend that the country would not be sending a representative to the inaugural ceremony of Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega — who has been categorized by most democratic nations as a dictator who is remaining in power on the back of an illegitimate election — President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) on Monday, Jan. 10, announced that his administration would be represented during the event by the current Mexican Embassy chargé d’affaires in Managua, Ramiro Ayala.

Speaking during his daily press conference at the National Palace, AMLO also said that leftist journalist and AMLO crony Guillermo Zamora will soon be sent as ambassador to Nicaragua.

López Obrador went on to say that not attending Ortega’s inauguration for another term as president of Nicaragua would be a “reckless” act.

When asked about the decision by SRE to not attend the ceremony, AMLO said that he did not know the date and time of the Nicaraguan president’s inauguration.

“When is the inauguration?” he asked.

When informed that it was that same day, AMLO said: “Oh, today? I didn’t know. We are going to have a representative there because we have good relations with everyone, with everyone, and we don’t want to be reckless.”

Many conservative Mexican papers had run columns on Monday morning congratulating the AMLO administration for not attending the ceremony, given that Ortega has been condemned internationally for allegedly rigging the election and jailing every leading opposition candidate.

But AMLO insisted that Mexico “cannot put aside our policy of self-determination of the peoples, independence.”

He also condemned the decision by the previous administration of Enrique Peña Nieto for expelling the North Korean ambassador, who was deported because he had used his diplomatic privileges to smuggle drugs and arms.