Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega, who has ruled the country for years, said the Central American nation will no longer hold elections, eliminating the possibility of an electoral challenge when his term ends next year and strengthening the power-sharing arrangement with his wife.
Ortega, who has remained in power continuously since 2007 after a previous presidency in the 1980s, said the move would close any path for the opposition, though he did not provide details on how the ban would be implemented.
Speaking in a Sunday evening address marking the anniversary of the 1979 Sandinista revolution, in which Ortega helped overthrow the U.S.-backed dictatorship of Anastasio Somoza, he said: “There will be no more elections here for them to try to take over the government and power.”
He added, in his first public appearance in two months at the age of 80: “The days when parties backed by the Yankees (the United States) and the Somocistas returned to power are over — and that will not happen again.”
The U.S. State Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The Trump administration has described Ortega’s government as a dictatorship and imposed sanctions on more than 2,350 Nicaraguan officials and their relatives.
Nicaragua’s most recent election in 2021 was widely disputed after Ortega arrested opposition figures and business leaders and criminalized dissent.
Last year, Ortega further strengthened his authority through a series of constitutional reforms that included appointing his wife, Rosario Murillo, as “co-president” and extending the presidential term to six years. He and his wife effectively control all aspects of government, including the armed forces and the judiciary.
The United Nations Human Rights Council has accused the Ortega-Murillo government of turning the country into an “authoritarian state” and committing systematic human rights violations. In 2018, Ortega responded to widespread anti-government protests with a crackdown that resulted in the deaths of more than 300 people.
Analysts and opposition politicians in exile said the announcement highlighted the reality of the power-sharing arrangement under Ortega while also revealing the couple’s fear that an opposition movement could take root.
Tiziano Breda, a senior analyst at the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data organization, which monitors political violence, said: “It is clear that Ortega and Murillo fear that even the slightest political opening could create conditions for the emergence of an opposition movement and threaten their grip on power. Instead of rigging elections, they chose to eliminate electoral competition altogether.”
He added that the country had become “a full dictatorship run by a family.”
Felix Maradiaga, an opposition presidential candidate who was imprisoned in Nicaragua from 2021 to 2023 before being expelled to the United States, said he viewed Ortega’s comments less as a display of strength and more as an “admission of fear.”
Maradiaga said: “Ortega publicly acknowledged what has always been his true intention: preventing his authoritarian project from being subjected to any form of democratic competition.”
According to Salvador Marenco, coordinator of the Nicaragua Nunca Más human rights group based in Costa Rica, Ortega had effectively crushed competition during previous election cycles in 2011, 2016, and 2021.
The constitutional reforms introduced last year established a one-party system in a country where opposition leaders are no longer present because they have been forced into exile.
He said Ortega was attempting to “avoid the risk of electoral defeat because he knows that the people reject him.”
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