On 20 November Nicaragua’s authoritarian President Daniel Ortega unveiled a proposed constitutional reform package.
Analysis:
Among a string of changes, the reform package would: increase presidential terms from five years to six years (Art.135); formally amend the post of vice president which Ortega’s wife Rosario Murillo currently occupies to that of “co-president” (Art. 133); and provides for further control by the executive of other branches of government. Set to be approved by the 92-member unicameral legislature which, like all institutions, is controlled by Ortega’s ruling Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional (FSLN), it is the latest sign of efforts to cement power by Ortega, who has been in office since 2007, and was last re-elected in November 2021 in a vote widely slammed as fraudulent and lacking democratic legitimacy, amid a brutal crackdown on dissent which has been taking place since 2018. The reform package has drawn condemnation from prominent opposition figures and the foreign community: the Organisation of American States (OAS), which Nicaragua formally left a year ago, described it as a “definitive attack on the democratic rule of law”.
- As well as the proposals to extend presidential terms (with terms also extended for legislators to six years from five [Art.146]) and to introduce the figure of “co-president”, the reform package establishes that the co-presidents would act as “coordinator” of the executive, legislative, judicial, and electoral powers (Art.132). It reduces the number of supreme court (CSJ) magistrates from 16 to nine (Art.157), and the number of electoral court (CSE) magistrates from seven to five (Art.159).
- The proposed reform package also authorises a “voluntary police” force (Art. 97) of citizens who would provide support to the police (PNN), which critics warn formalise FSLN shock troops who have previously helped the PNN quell anti-government protests. It also authorises the presidency to order the army to intervene “in support of” the PNN when required (Art.94), and for military and PNN officials to “temporarily occupy” positions in the executive branch “when the nation's supreme interest demands”. (Art.97).
- Under the reform package “traitors to the homeland” (Art.17) can be stripped of their nationality – a fate which has already befallen hundreds of opponents, including politicians and journalists. It would also tighten control over the media (Art.68) and the Church (Art.14) (a major target of the Ortega government in its crackdown), stipulating that these should not be subject to “foreign interests”.
- The proposed reforms have been widely slammed by government critics. One prominent dissident Félix Maradiaga, a former presidential pre-candidate expelled in February 2023, was cited by BBC Mundo as saying that the reform package “not only represents a totalitarian consolidation of power in the hands of Ortega and Murillo but formalises on paper, the systemic violations to human rights which the dictatorship has been committing for years.”
- The OAS also did not mince its words, calling it “illegitimate in form and content”, and an “aberrant form of institutionalisation of the matrimonial dictatorship in the Central American country”.
- Manuel Orozco, the Nicaraguan-born director of the Migration, Remittances, and Development Programme at the US think tank Inter-American Dialogue, was cited by the Associated Press (AP) as linking the reform package to the prospect of a new US administration led by President-elect Donald Trump. While Trump’s government may not prioritise crackdowns on democratic freedoms, Orozco said that it isn’t likely to “tolerate provocations” – particularly under Trump’s nominee for secretary of state, Marco Rubio, a hardliner and outspoken critic of the Ortega government.
Looking Ahead: With the foreign community having previously responded to the Ortega government’s dismantling of democracy with sanctions and visa restrictions, yesterday the president also unveiled a bill that would make it illegal for foreign sanctions to be applied “within Nicaraguan territory.”