Nicaragua’s President Ortega moves to extend his 20-year rule and says no elections anytime soon

President Daniel Ortega and his wife, Vice President Rosario Murillo, lead a rally in Managua, Nicaragua, Sept. 5, 2018.

MEXICO CITY — Nicaragua’s President Daniel Ortega said his country won’t be holding elections anytime soon, a statement underscoring the strongman’s efforts to extend his nearly 20-year rule and dashing hopes by the opposition that he might 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 that toppled the Somoza dictatorship in 1979 and first brought him to power. He returned to the presidency in 2007 and has since rewritten the constitution, crushed political opposition and solidified his control over virtually all branches of the Nicaraguan government.

Since mass protests in 2018, which led to a bloody government crackdown that killed hundreds, Ortega and his wife and co-President Rosario Murillo have been holding on to power.

Ortega declared himself the winner of the 2021 election — a vote widely viewed as illegitimate by the international community — after jailing all the candidates who could have possibly beaten him. The U.S. does not recognize Ortega’s presidency.

“There won’t be anymore elections,” Ortega said in a speech railing on his longtime adversary, the United States. “Parties put in place by the Yankees, put in place by the Somoza regime, coming back to power — that story is over.”

“Never, never, never,” he said of any future elections.

Opponents and rights groups said the Sunday announcement represents an escalation as Ortega further solidifies his grip on Nicaragua.

Juan Sebastián Chamorro, a 2021 candidate who was behind bars until he was released to the U.S. in 2023 with more than 200 other political prisoners, said the announcement reveals Ortega’s longstanding plan to consolidate power in the hands of the Sandinista party, similar to other one-party rule countries like China and Cuba.

“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,” said Tiziano Breda, a senior Latin America analyst at independent conflict monitor ACLED.

“Instead of staging a rigged election, they have opted to eliminate electoral competition altogether,” he added.

Danny Ramírez Ayérdiz, a Nicaraguan lawyer and founder of the Interamerican Center for Legal Assistance in Human Rights that investigates abuses of the Ortega-Murillo government from Argentina, said the announcement “reveals the face of a dictatorship that, without any shame, has entrenched itself in power.”

“It indicates a potentially higher level of repression against people who demand the removal of the government or the holding of elections,” Ramírez Ayérdiz said.

At least 46 people are behind bars in Nicaragua for political reasons, according to the Mechanism for Recognition of Political Prisoners group, which tracks the cases. Nicaragua denies holding political prisoners.

In the wake of the U.S. military operation that captured Venezuela’s then-President Nicolás Maduro in a January raid, the Nicaraguan government said it would release more prisoners, apparently an effort to stave off pressure on itself.

But there has been no follow-up and little transparency on the issue. At least one imprisoned activist has died since then.

In recent years, the government has released hundreds of imprisoned activists, religious leaders and politicians — including a number of 2021 presidential candidates — to the U.S. and Guatemala, stripping many of their Nicaraguan citizenship and belongings.

Those freed described being held in isolation and said they were subjected to physical and psychological torture.

Since 2018, Nicaragua has also shuttered more than 5,000 organizations, largely religious, and forced thousands to flee the country. Earlier in July, the Ortega-Murillo government stripped masses of lawyers of their licenses to practice in what U.N. experts called a “purge of the legal profession.”

Anna-catherine Brigida, The Associated Press