Nicaragua's President Ortega Scraps Future Elections and Solidifies His Power

In the run-up, the ruling-party-aligned parliament had already extended the president's term by one year in January 2025. International observers had deemed the originally planned 2026 election undemocratic, since Ortega had had all promising rival candidates arrested and subsequently declared himself the winner of the 2021 election. With the latest announcement, the government is now going a step further and abolishing the act of voting itself.

Background: Ortega's Path to Power

The opposition group "Mechanism for Recognition of Political Prisoners" counts at least 46 people imprisoned in Nicaragua for political reasons. Since a US military operation against Venezuelan strongman Nicolás Maduro in January, at least one jailed activist has also died. The Nicaraguan government, however, denies holding political prisoners. Since 2018, according to available data, more than 5,000 organizations have been shut down, including numerous religious groups; NGOs and the Catholic Church are banned, and press freedom is severely restricted.

Human rights advocates see the announcement as a further escalation. Danny Ramírez Ayérdiz, a Nicaraguan lawyer and founder of the Interamerican Center for Legal Assistance in Human Rights based in Argentina, said the move "indicates a potentially higher level of repression against people who demand the removal of the government or the holding of elections" and "reveals the face of a dictatorship that, without any shame, has entrenched itself in power". Ramírez Ayérdiz warns of a tightening of repression against anyone calling for a change of government or elections.

Reactions from Opposition and Experts

Former presidential candidate Juan Sebastián Chamorro, who was imprisoned in 2021 and deported to the United States in 2023, sees the move as a long-term plan by the Sandinista Party to maintain power. As in China or Cuba, power should be concentrated in the hands of a single party, he said. Tiziano Breda, senior Latin America analyst at the independent conflict-monitoring organization ACLED, stated: "Instead of staging a rigged election, they have opted to eliminate electoral competition altogether."

Former revolutionary commander Dora María Tellez, who was deported into exile after nearly two years of imprisonment, also spoke harshly. The abolition of elections shows "seine schreckliche Angst. Er hat nicht einmal mehr Vertrauen in seine eigene soziale Basis, nicht in die Menschen, die in seinem Umfeld arbeiten," she said. Tellez pointed out that there have been no free elections in Nicaragua since 2006 and that Ortega "einen Wahlbetrug nach dem anderen begangen" habe. The violent crackdown on the 2018 protests, in which hundreds of people were killed, has forced an estimated 800,000 Nicaraguans to flee abroad.

International Criticism and Isolation

Internationally, the announcement has triggered sharp reactions. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio declared on the day of the event that Ortega and his co-president and wife Rosario Murillo, who has been in office for two years and is 75 years old, had "even the pretense of relying on the support of the population" given up. Nicaragua cannot expect a normalization of relations as long as it rejects democratic principles. Rubio called on the international community to isolate Nicaragua. The relevant office of the US State Department urged partners in the region to work with the United States so that the people of Nicaragua could choose "a future free of tyranny".

The United States does not recognize Ortega's presidency in any case. In the past, the Nicaraguan government had also deported hundreds of prisoners — including activists, religious leaders and politicians — to the United States and Guatemala, stripping many of them of their Nicaraguan citizenship and their assets. Following the US operation against Maduro, the Nicaraguan government announced the release of additional prisoners. Observers view this as a response to pressure from Washington.

The situation in Nicaragua remains tense. With the scrapping of elections, a system that critics call a dictatorship is becoming further entrenched. Breda put it succinctly: "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."