Daniel Ortega announces the end of the elections in Nicaragua. The strongman of the Central American country has declared that consultations that could allow the opposition to take over the government will no longer be allowed, explicitly opening the way to a political system without alternation or real electoral competition.
The declaration arrived on Sunday 19 July, during the celebrations for the 47th anniversary of the Sandinista Revolution of 1979 which brought about the end of the dictatorship of Anastasio Somoza Debayle, and represents a further tightening of the control exercised by Ortega and his wife Rosario Murillo over the institutions.
“There will be no more elections here, to prevent them from trying to take over the government and power,” said Ortega, maintaining that the days in which parties supported by the United States and the “Somozists” could hope to return to the leadership of Nicaragua are over. The Sandinista leader (an ideology socialist And nationalist based on the thought of Augusto César Sandino) announced that the government will work with the National Assembly, controlled by the Sandinista Front, to legally prevent the participation of forces defined as “coup plotters” and “traitors of the homeland”. However, he did not explain in detail how and when the ban will be introduced.
Ortega’s authoritarian turn
Ortega, 80 years old, returned to the presidency on January 10, 2007, after having already led Nicaragua first as coordinator of the revolutionary junta and then as president in the 1980s. In 2025, a profound constitutional reform transformed Rosario Murillo from vice president to “co-president”, extended the mandates from five to six years and gave the presidency coordination power over the legislative, judicial and electoral bodies.
The announcement comes at the end of a long process of dismantling the political opposition. Before the November 2021 elections, seven aspiring presidential candidates were arrested, while parties and other candidates were excluded from the competition. Ortega thus obtained his fourth consecutive mandate in a consultation that the Organization of American States declared to have no democratic legitimacy. The next presidential elections were scheduled for November 2027, but the mandate of the presidential couple was extended until January 2028.