On the 47th anniversary of the 1979 Sandinista Revolution, Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega announced that there will be no more elections that would allow opponents to try to take control of the government. The announcement on Sunday confirms a move toward tightening his hold on power. The first signs came last year when Ortega introduced constitutional reforms that, among other measures, named his wife Rosario Murillo “co-president” and extended the presidential term to six years.
The 80-year-old president has remained continuously in power since 2007, after an earlier term in the 1980s. He did not explain how elections would be formally abolished. The announcement comes ahead of the next election, originally scheduled for November 2027.The move would effectively eliminate any remaining space for the opposition. The most recent elections, held in 2021, were widely disputed after Ortega ordered the arrest of opposition figures and members of the business community, and crushed dissent.Human rights organizations strongly condemned the latest announcement.
According to Juan Sebastián Chamorro, a candidate in the 2021 election who was imprisoned until his release to the United States in 2023 along with more than 200 other political prisoners, the move confirms a long-standing plan to concentrate power in the hands of the Sandinista party.
According to the Mechanism for Recognition of Political Prisoners, an organization that documents cases from exile, at least 46 people are currently being held for political reasons in Nicaragua.Following a U.S. operation in Venezuela in January that led to the capture of Nicolás Maduro, the Nicaraguan government announced it would release additional dissidents.Since 2018, Nicaragua has shut down more than 5,000 organizations, most of them religious, forcing thousands of people to leave the country.At the beginning of July, the Ortega-Murillo government also revoked the professional licenses of a large number of lawyers. United Nations experts described the action as a full-scale purge of the legal profession.