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After 19 consecutive years in power —during which he amended Nicaragua’s Constitution to allow for indefinite reelection and to establish, in February 2025, an unelected family “co-presidency”— Daniel Ortega announced last Sunday, July 19, that “there will be no more elections.” He said this during the commemoration of the 47th anniversary of the Sandinista Revolution in Managua, amid the cheers and applause of a crowd of supporters.
His remarks drew a wave of international criticism. The official news portal, El 19 Digital, omitted the statement from a transcript. Some regime defenders claimed Ortega had said “no volverán a ver elecciones” (opponents in exile “will never see elections again”), playing with the homophones “a ver” and “haber.”
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“The story that parties installed by the Yankees, installed by the Somocistas, will return to power is over. Never, never, never,” Ortega continued. “Don’t think that just because there’s no war, we’re at peace. No, they’re out there conspiring. Conspiring, organizing. Figuring out how to organize parties so that they will supposedly win an election.”
“Long live Commander Daniel. Long live Commander Rosario,” the attendees shouted in the middle of his speech. Most were public sector workers who, according to the exiled newspaper La Prensa, had no cell phone signal and were restricted from using the restroom during the event.
The next elections were scheduled for November 2027, but talk of democracy in Nicaragua has been paper-thin for a decade and a half. The Inter-American Court of Human Rights ruled in 2025 that Ortega’s reelection to a second consecutive term in 2011 was unconstitutional. Since then, he has been reelected twice more. In the most recent election in 2021, the regime arrested seven opposition candidates and dissolved the political parties of the two main opposition movements.
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Ortega is 80 years old. Since 2017, he has governed alongside his wife, Rosario Murillo. But under the constitutional reforms of 2025, Murillo, who today turned 75, assumed the role of co-president without having been elected to that new position. The regime also eliminated the separation of powers and established that, in the event that one of the co-presidents dies while in office, the other will remain in power.