The U. S. has stopped 60 mil­lion dol­lars of aid to Nicaragua. The U. S. gov­ern­ment cut the aid because of con­cerns about democ­racy and free mar­kets in the country.

From this Asso­ci­ated Press story that we found at Ore­gon Live, reporter Matthew Lee recieves an expla­na­tion from the gov­ern­ment about the cuts in aid.

The board of the Mil­len­nium Chal­lenge Cor­po­ra­tion, a U.S. taxpayer-funded oper­a­tion set up by for­mer Pres­i­dent George W. Bush to fight poverty in devel­op­ing nations, said Wednes­day it had cut $62 mil­lion from a $175 mil­lion pro­gram for Nicaragua because of prob­lems in recent elec­tions.

“This deci­sion is made with deep dis­ap­point­ment, as our part­ner­ship with Nicaragua has yielded tremen­dous progress over the past years in reduc­ing poverty through inno­v­a­tive eco­nomic growth projects,” said Rod­ney Bent, the corporation’s chief executive.

The cut in aid fol­lows a sus­pen­sion in new U.S. assis­tance announced last Novem­ber after munic­i­pal elec­tions that the oppo­si­tion said were marred by fraud. Nicaraguan Pres­i­dent Daniel Ortega, a leader of the San­din­istas in the 1980s, declared the protests were unconstitutional.

In March, Ortega accused the U.S. of pun­ish­ing the poor with the sus­pen­sion and defended the local elec­tions, in which his San­din­istas won a major­ity of may­or­ships, as fair. The oppo­si­tion said the vote was fraud­u­lent and com­plained that inter­na­tional observers were not allowed.

Bent said the MCC would only back coun­tries whose “gov­ern­ments actively demon­strate a com­mit­ment to democ­racy and the rule of law, as well as eco­nomic free­dom and social investment.”

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