Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega, who has been in power for nearly two decades, ruled out on Sunday any possibility of future elections in the country, saying they could allow the exiled opposition to one day take control of the government. “They should forget about it. Here in Nicaragua, there will never again be elections that they can use to try to seize the government and take power,” Ortega said, referring to his opponents during an event marking the 47th anniversary of the Sandinista Revolution in Managua.
Ortega, 80, governed during the 1980s and returned to power in 2007. He has remained in office ever since, following disputed elections and measures that eliminated his political rivals, while governing alongside his wife, Rosario Murillo. Nicaragua had been scheduled to hold general elections next November, but a sweeping constitutional reform approved a year and a half ago extended the presidential term from five to six years. The elections are therefore expected to take place in November 2027.
Ortega and Murillo rule Nicaragua with virtually absolute power and maintain tight control over Nicaraguan society, particularly since the 2018 protests, whose violent repression left more than 300 people dead, according to the United Nations. Opposition leaders have been imprisoned or forced into exile and stripped of their citizenship and property. Journalists, intellectuals and members of the clergy who criticized the government have faced similar treatment. Thousands of Nicaraguans now live as refugees in Costa Rica, Spain and the United States.
Opposition movements in exile have expressed hope that international pressure could eventually lead to a political transition or free elections in Nicaragua. “They have been conspiring, trying to find ways to organize political parties so that, in an election they imagine will take place, those parties can win,” Ortega said before thousands of supporters gathered in a Managua plaza.
However, he added, “the era in which parties installed by the Yankees, by the United States, could return to government is over. Never, never, never.”
“A Wall” Against “Coup Plotters”
Appearing at the public event alongside his wife and several of their children, Ortega announced that new laws would be approved to block the opposition. “We are going to work with the National Assembly and the appropriate organizations because laws must be created to put up a wall, a barrier against the coup plotters and the traitors. No matter how much money the Yankees give them, they will not be able” to take power, he said.
A constitutional reform that took effect in Nicaragua in February 2025 eliminated the independence of the branches of government and granted sweeping authority to Ortega and Murillo, whose position was elevated from vice president to co-president. The Nicaraguan leader had not appeared in public for two months. He arrived at Sunday’s event driving a car.
In recent months, he had been seen struggling to walk during public appearances. Opposition figures claim Murillo is conducting an internal purge throughout state institutions in preparation for Ortega’s possible death. Ortega reportedly suffers from lupus and kidney failure.
Ortega and Murillo accuse the opposition of treason and of attempting to carry out a coup, as they characterized the mass protests of 2018. They also accuse international organizations that have documented serious human rights violations in Nicaragua of interference and spreading lies.
Ortega is a former guerrilla fighter with the leftist Sandinista National Liberation Front, the ruling FSLN, which overthrew the 42-year Somoza family dictatorship in July 1979.
