Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega aims to bar individuals labeled as 'traitors' from participating in future elections. This development follows a speech delivered on July 19 during the 47th anniversary of the Sandinista Revolution.
Ortega addressed a crowd of 70,000 people in Managua's Plaza de Fe. During the event, he stated that the era of parties established and supported by the United States and the Somoza regime returning to power is over. He added that financial support from the US would not allow them to succeed.
Ortega also indicated moves to extend the presidential term to seven years. He has overseen a sweeping crackdown on civil society and concentrated power in his own hands. The constitutional reform was presented following statements made by Co-President Daniel Ortega on July 19.
Dispute over election remarks
Reports regarding Ortega’s stance on future polls vary. British and American media reported that Ortega said elections would no longer be held in Nicaragua. The New York Times published the headline 'Nicaraguan leader says he plans to scrap elections'. Some sources argue this headline was a deliberate distortion of Ortega's actual words.
Jill Clark-Gollub, an interpreter authorized in US federal courts, said that Ortega's words were deliberately distorted by interrupting him before finishing his sentence. Stephen Sefton claimed that a plan called 'Plan Condor 2.0' has been activated. He reported that Ortega said there will be no more elections like this here, meaning no more elections where the US can establish a regime through fraud.
Becca Renk Foster asserted that the US launched a campaign to interfere in Nicaraguan elections by deliberately misrepresenting Ortega's speech. Camila Escalante said the remarks were deliberately taken out of context and mistranslated. According to Nicaraguan journalists and media, there was a systematic smear campaign against Nicaragua.
International reaction and context
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio stated that Daniel Ortega's statement that there will never again be elections in Nicaragua under his family's dictatorship lays bare their true authoritarian nature. Successive US administrations from Biden to Trump have criticized Nicaragua. The US has not used direct military intervention in Nicaragua as it did in Venezuela.
US Republican Senator Rick Scott stated that Cuba and Nicaragua were among US targets after the January 3 attack on Venezuelan President Maduro. Brazil, Cuba, Mexico and Nicaragua are not currently under US control. The Economist magazine referred to Nicaragua as 'tropical North Korea'.
Human rights concerns
Amnesty International warned that the constitutional reform to extend the presidential term and permanently exclude individuals labeled as 'traitors' from elections represents a further step in dismantling the right of Nicaraguans to participate in public affairs. Ana Piquer, Americas Director at Amnesty International, stated that the electoral reform is an attempt to consolidate a system where the state arbitrarily decides who may exercise fundamental human rights.
Nicaragua is a state party to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and is bound by its Article 25, which recognizes the right to participate in public affairs. Amnesty International called on the UN Human Rights Council to ensure that the Group of Human Rights Experts on Nicaragua monitors the proposed legislative measures. The organization also called on other states not to recognise the suppression of the right to participate in public affairs as a sovereign domestic decision and to raise the issue in multilateral forums.
Ana Piquer stated that behind every shut-down organisation, revoked licence, and stripped nationality is someone deprived of expression, organisation, and decision-making. Since the 2018 protests, Nicaraguan authorities have cancelled the legal status of more than 5,000 civil society organisations. Authorities have shut down independent media outlets and arbitrarily stripped political opponents, journalists, and human rights defenders of their nationality.
In 2025, a constitutional reform in Nicaragua abolished the separation of powers and subordinated the legislative, judicial, and electoral branches to the Presidency. In July 2026, hundreds of legal professionals in Nicaragua were stripped of their licences to practise, described by UN experts as a purge of the legal profession.
There are differing accounts regarding the death toll and nature of the 2018 unrest in Nicaragua. Sources such as the government characterize the events as a 'violent coup attempt' and report approximately 270 deaths. In contrast, civil society organizations and human rights mechanisms describe the events as 'protests' and report that more than 300 people were killed during the state repression. Furthermore, while some claim that investigations revealed the 2018 violence in Nicaragua was funded by the US government, others dispute the findings of these investigations.