Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega has declared that the country will no longer conduct elections, signalling an end to electoral contests and further tightening the political control he shares with his wife, Rosario Murillo.
The 80-year-old leader, who has remained in office since returning to power in 2007 after serving as president during the 1980s, said the decision would prevent the opposition from using elections to gain control of the government. However, he did not explain how the policy would be implemented.
“There won’t be any more elections here for them to try to seize the government and seize power,” Ortega said in a speech on Sunday evening to commemorate the 1979 Sandinista revolution, in which Ortega helped overthrow the US-backed Anastasio Somoza dictatorship.
“The days when parties backed by the Yankees (United States) and the Somocistas would return to power are over – never again,” he added, in the 80-year-old’s first public appearance in two months.
The US State Department did not immediately comment on Ortega’s remarks. The administration of President Donald Trump has repeatedly described Ortega’s government as a dictatorship and has imposed sanctions on more than 2,350 Nicaraguan officials and members of their families.
Ortega secured another term in the 2021 presidential election, a vote that drew widespread criticism after opposition figures, business leaders and government critics were detained or silenced ahead of the polls.
His grip on power was strengthened further last year through constitutional amendments that named Murillo as “co-president” and increased the presidential tenure to six years. The couple now exercises extensive authority over key state institutions, including the military and the judiciary.
The UN Human Rights Council has accused Ortega and Murillo’s government of transforming the country “into an authoritarian state” and systematically violating human rights. In 2018, Ortega responded to widespread anti-government protests with a crackdown in which more than 300 people were killed.
Political analysts and opposition figures living outside Nicaragua said Ortega’s latest declaration confirms the country’s transition into a system dominated by the president and his wife while exposing their concerns about any future opposition challenge.
“Ortega and Murillo are evidently afraid at the idea that the slightest political opening could create the conditions for dissent to manifest and threaten their grip on power,” said Tiziano Breda, a senior analyst at Armed Conflict Location & Event Data, a nonprofit that tracks political violence. “Instead of staging a rigged election, they have opted to eliminate electoral competition altogether.”
The country has transformed into a “full-fledged, family-run dictatorship,” he added.
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Felix Maradiaga, a presidential hopeful for the opposition who was jailed in Nicaragua from 2021 to 2023 before being expelled to the US, said he saw Ortega’s comments less as a show of force than as “a confession of fear.”
“Ortega publicly acknowledged what has always been his true intention: to prevent his tyrannical project from being subjected to any form of democratic competition,” Maradiaga told Reuters.
Salvador Marenco, coordinator of the Costa Rica-based Nicaragua Nunca Más Human Rights Collective, said Ortega had already dismantled meaningful political competition during the presidential elections of 2011, 2016 and 2021.
Marenco added that last year’s constitutional reforms had effectively created a one-party political system, with opposition leaders either imprisoned or forced into exile.
Ortega, he said, is trying to “avoid the risk of an electoral defeat, because he knows that the people reject him.”
(CNN)
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