Nicaragua’s president says country will not hold any more elections | Nicaragua
Nicaragua’s long-serving president, Daniel Ortega, has said there will be no further elections in the country to prevent the opposition from coming to power.
The 80-year-old authoritarian leader, who has been in office since 2007, also said he would work with the congress he controls to pass new laws that would “build a wall” against opposition.
Ortega made the announcement Sunday during an official ceremony marking the 47th anniversary of the 1979 Sandinista revolution, in which he helped bring down the brutal dictatorship of Anastasio Somoza.
Many describe his announcement as a significant rhetorical escalation, even though his administration and that of his wife and “co-president” Rosario Murillo have been marked by the steady erosion of democracy in the Central American country.
“With this decision, Ortega and Murillo have sealed the country’s transition to a full-fledged family dictatorship,” said Tiziano Breda, senior analyst for Latin America at the NGO Armed Conflict Location and Event Data.
In a speech in front of thousands of government employees, According to local mediaOrtega, who was forced to participate, said: “There will be no more elections here, so they can participate too. [the opposition parties] “He may try to take over the government, seize power.”
The President, who did not appear in public for 61 days, added: “We will work with the Turkish Grand National Assembly and relevant institutions on the law because we need laws that build walls and barriers against coup plotters and traitors who sold their country.”
Elections were scheduled to be held next year, but Ortega gave no details on whether the elections would be canceled or whether the opposition would be barred from participating; This is something that already happens in practice. During the 2021 election campaign, his regime banned parties and jailed all opposition presidential candidates.
Breda said: “Ortega and Murillo are clearly afraid of the idea that the slightest political opening could create the conditions for opposition to manifest and threaten their grip on power, possibly indicating that their already weak domestic support has fallen even further.
“So instead of staging a rigged election, they chose to eliminate electoral competition altogether.”
Last year, Ortega implemented a series of constitutional reforms, including extending the presidential term from five to six years and appointing his wife, then vice president, to the position of “co-president.” USA means They called their rule the “Murillo-Ortega dictatorship.”
In his speech, the Nicaraguan president criticized the USA for the January operation in which Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro was kidnapped: “With all their might, they raided the presidential palace where Nicolás and his wife Cilia were located. [Flores]There was. They killed the entire security team there (mostly Cubans) and took them to the USA to imprison them. “This is terrible.”
The president said preventing the opposition from returning to power was necessary to protect the country from “coup plotters” who he claimed were behind nationwide protests in 2018, when his regime launched a violent crackdown that killed more than 350 people, injured hundreds, imprisoned thousands and forced nearly 1 million Nicaraguans into exile, according to organizations including the UN.
Recently, the UN, the US, human rights organizations and 30 former Ibero-American presidents directly blamed Ortega and Murillo for the death of the Indigenous leader and four-term congressman. Brooklyn RiverThe US State Department said that the 73-year-old man, who was “unjustly imprisoned” by the regime for nearly three years, died.
According to organizations including Human Rights Watch, there are nearly 50 political prisoners in the country. The regime stripped 546 people of citizenship and closed more than 5,600 non-governmental organizations, 29 universities and 58 media outlets.
