Nicaragua's Ortega says country will not hold elections anytime soon

Nicaragua's President Daniel Ortega says his country will not hold elections anytime soon.

The statement underscores the strongman's efforts to extend his nearly 20-year rule and dashes hopes by the opposition that he might heed their demands for a democratic vote.

The announcement also effectively cancelled Nicaragua's next elections, originally scheduled for November 2027.

In January 2025 its government-controlled congress voted to extend the five-year presidential term by one year.

Mr Ortega spoke 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, Mr Ortega and his wife and co-President Rosario Murillo have been holding on to power.

Mr Ortega declared himself the winner of the 2021 election in a vote widely viewed as illegitimate by the international community and after jailing all the candidates who could have possibly beaten him.

"There won't be anymore elections," Mr Ortega said in a speech railing against 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.

Opponents say nation moving to one-party rule

Opponents and rights groups said the announcement represented an escalation as Mr Ortega further solidified his grip on Nicaragua.

Juan Sebastián Chamorro, a 2021 candidate who was behind bars until he was released to the US in 2023 with more than 200 other political prisoners, said the announcement revealed Mr 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, which 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," Mr 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 US military operation that captured Venezuela's then-president Nicolás Maduro in a January raid, the Nicaraguan government said it would release more prisoners, apparently in 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.

Since 2018, Nicaragua has also shuttered more than 5,000 organisations, largely religious, and forced thousands to flee the country.

Earlier in July, the Ortega-Murillo government stripped masses of lawyers of their licences to practise in what UN experts called a "purge of the legal profession".