President Daniel Ortega and his wife, Vice President Rosario Murillo, lead a rally in Managua, Nicaragua, September 5, 2018.
Alfredo Zuniga/AP
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Alfredo Zuniga/AP
MEXICO CITY – Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega said his country will not hold elections anytime soon. The statement underscores the authoritarian’s efforts to extend his nearly 20-year rule and dashes opposition hopes that he will heed their demands for a democratic vote.
The announcement effectively canceled Nicaragua’s next elections, originally scheduled for November 2027, after the government-controlled Congress voted in January 2025 to extend the five-year presidential term by one year.
Ortega spoke on Sunday at the anniversary of the Sandinista Revolution, which toppled Somoza’s dictatorship in 1979 and brought him to power for the first time. He returned to the presidency in 2007 and has since rewritten the constitution, crushed political opposition and consolidated his control over virtually every branch of Nicaraguan government.
Since mass protests in 2018 that led to a bloody government crackdown that left hundreds dead, Ortega and his wife and co-president Rosario Murillo have held power.
Ortega declared himself the winner of the 2021 elections (a vote that the international community considers illegitimate) after jailing all the candidates who could defeat him. The United States does not recognize Ortega’s presidency.
“There will be no more elections,” Ortega said in a speech, criticizing his longtime enemy, the United States. “Parties created by the Yankees, installed by the Somoza regime, returned to power – this story is over.”
“Never, never, never,” he said of any future elections.
Opponents and rights groups said Sunday’s announcement represented an escalation as Ortega further tightens his control over Nicaragua.
Juan Sebastian Chamorro, a 2021 candidate who was behind bars until he was released into the United States in 2023 along with more than 200 other political prisoners, said the announcement reveals Ortega’s long-standing plan to consolidate power in the hands of the Sandinista Party, similar to other countries with one-party rule such as China and Cuba.
“Ortega and Murillo are obviously afraid of the idea that the slightest political opening could create conditions for dissent and threaten their power,” said Tiziano Breda, senior analyst for Latin America at independent conflict watchdog ACLED.
“Instead of holding rigged elections, they decided to completely eliminate electoral competition,” he added.
Danny Ramirez Ayerdiz, a Nicaraguan lawyer and founder of the Inter-American Center for Legal Assistance for Human Rights, which is investigating the abuses of the Ortega-Murillo government in Argentina, said the announcement “reveals the face of a dictatorship that has consolidated itself in power without any shame.”
“This indicates a potentially higher level of repression against people who demand the overthrow of the government or holding elections,” Ramirez Ayerdiz said.
At least 46 people are behind bars in Nicaragua for political reasons, according to the group Recognition Mechanism for Political Prisoners, which tracks these cases. Nicaragua denies having political prisoners.
Following a U.S. military operation that captured then-Venezuela President Nicolas Maduro in a raid in January, the Nicaraguan government said it would release more prisoners, in an apparent attempt to prevent pressure on itself.
But there has been no follow-up and there is little transparency on the issue. At least one jailed activist has since died.
In recent years, the government has released hundreds of jailed activists, religious leaders and politicians, including a number of 2021 presidential candidates, in the United States and Guatemala, stripping many of their Nicaraguan citizenship and property.
Those released said they were kept in isolation and subjected to physical and psychological torture.
Since 2018, Nicaragua has also closed more than 5,000 organizations, mostly religious, and forced thousands of people to flee the country. Earlier in July, the Ortega-Murillo government deprived a lot of lawyers of their licenses to practice, which UN experts called a “cleansing of the legal profession.”