Nicaragua's Ortega formally ends elections, consolidating one-party rule

President Daniel Ortega declared in a Sunday speech that Nicaragua will hold no more elections, effectively canceling the presidential election originally scheduled for November 2027 and formalizing the end of electoral competition in the Central American nation. According to NPR's reporting, Ortega stated 'There won't be anymore elections' and 'Never, never, never' at an event marking the anniversary of the Sandinista Revolution that toppled the Somoza dictatorship in 1979.

The announcement represents an explicit shift from staged electoral contests to permanent one-party rule. Ortega returned to Nicaragua's presidency in 2007 and has since rewritten the constitution, crushed political opposition, and solidified control over virtually all branches of government, according to NPR.

The path to this moment has been marked by escalating suppression of dissent. In the 2021 election, widely viewed by the international community as illegitimate and not recognized by the U.S., Ortega declared himself the winner after jailing all the candidates who could have possibly defeated him. Mass protests in 2018 led to a bloody government crackdown that killed hundreds, according to NPR. In January 2025, the government-controlled Congress voted to extend the five-year presidential term by one year, per NPR's reporting.

The government has released hundreds of imprisoned activists, religious leaders, and politicians to the U.S. and Guatemala in recent years, stripping many of their Nicaraguan citizenship. Those freed described being held in isolation and subjected to physical and psychological torture, according to NPR. At least 46 people remain behind bars in Nicaragua for political reasons, according to the Mechanism for Recognition of Political Prisoners group cited by NPR, though Nicaragua denies holding political prisoners. Following a U.S. military operation that captured Venezuela's then-President Nicolás Maduro in January, the Nicaraguan government said it would release more prisoners, but there has been no follow-up and little transparency on the issue; at least one imprisoned activist has died since then, per NPR.

Since 2018, Nicaragua has shuttered more than 5,000 organizations, largely religious, and forced thousands to flee the country, according to NPR. 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,' per NPR.

In his Sunday speech, Ortega railed against the United States, stating 'Parties put in place by the Yankees, put in place by the Somoza regime, coming back to power, that story is over,' according to NPR. Juan Sebastián Chamorro, a 2021 presidential candidate imprisoned until his 2023 release to the U.S., 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, per NPR. Tiziano Breda, a senior Latin America analyst at ACLED, told NPR that 'Instead of staging a rigged election, they have opted to eliminate electoral competition altogether.' Danny Ramírez Ayérdiz, a Nicaraguan lawyer and founder of the Interamerican Center for Legal Assistance in Human Rights, said the announcement 'reveals the face of a dictatorship that, without any shame, has entrenched itself in power,' according to NPR.