20/07/2026 19:23 - Internacionales
On July 19, 2026, Nicaragua's President, Daniel Ortega, 80, bluntly declared that there will be 'no more elections' in the country to prevent the opposition from accessing power. The announcement was made during the commemoration of the 47th anniversary of the Sandinista revolution in Managua.
Forget it! There will be no more elections here so they can try to grab the government, grab power through there, Ortega sentenced before a crowd of supporters. The ruler, who has accumulated power since 2007, assured that he will work together with the National Assembly—controlled by his party—to pass laws that will put up a wall, a block against political parties seeking to contest power through democratic means.
Ortega's announcement represents a discursive and political leap toward a hegemonic party model, similar to North Korea or China, where elections do not constitute a real mechanism for change. According to reports from Infobae and El País, exiled economist and opposition member Juan Sebastián Chamorro indicated that Ortega has taken off another mask and aspires to a system of internal designations, as occurs in China.
For his part, opposition lawyer Juan Diego Barberena highlighted that the novelty is not that elections are no longer free, but that not even fraudulent elections, the pantomimes they organized, will be held. The message points to the perpetuation of power in a dynastic way, alongside his wife, Rosario Murillo.
The crisis deepens with the context of constitutional reforms promoted in February 2025. These amendments eliminated the balance of powers, subordinating the judicial and legislative branches to the executive, and created the figure of co-president for Rosario Murillo. They also extended the presidential term from five to six years and displaced the general elections originally scheduled for November 2026, setting the next theoretical elections for November 2027.
Exiled political analyst Eliseo Núñez interpreted the announcement as a maneuver of accomplished facts: If at some point pressures force him to negotiate, he will no longer start from the point that there are elections that must be free. Now the starting point will be that there simply are no elections.
The collective Nicaragua Nunca Más (Nicaragua Never Again), working from Costa Rica, denounced that the government has stripped civil society of all its rights.
The Sandinista revolution (1979) overthrew the Somoza family dictatorship. Ortega, a former guerrilla leader, ruled initially in the 1980s, returned to power in 2007, and has since eroded democratic institutions. The 2018 protests were massive anti-government demonstrations met with lethal force, marking the beginning of the current authoritarian phase.
Ortega also took advantage of his speech to attack the United States, accusing 'diabolical beasts' of wanting to dominate peoples. He referenced the capture of Venezuela's President, Nicolás Maduro, in January 2026, calling the US military operation in Caracas a 'monstrosity.'
The US State Department had already accused Rosario Murillo in January of this year of having 'invented' the position of co-president without a mandate or legitimacy, 'because she knows she cannot win' in a free electoral process. Washington maintains financial sanctions against dozens of officials and entities linked to the regime, reminding that 'all options remain on the table.'
Despite the elimination of democracy, the international community keeps alive the hope that diplomatic pressure and the resistance of the exiled opposition can restore the rule of law in Nicaragua in the future. The resilience of the Nicaraguan people and the global spotlight on these abuses remain crucial pillars for the eventual return of freedom.
Alfredo S. Quiroga
