Caribbean & Central America - March 2025

“A lawless, repressive army that has been given constitutional status”.  This was the response by exiled Nicaraguan opposition writer Gioconda Belli to recently approved changes to the constitution which create a voluntary police force. Approved in late January by the 92-member unicameral legislature, which like all institutions is controlled by President Daniel Ortega’s Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional (FSLN), the changes are in line with the constitutional reform package that he unveiled in November 2024 [SSR-25-01]. Critics consider the new force little more than an institutionalisation of the paramilitary FSLN shock groups which played a key role in helping the police (PNN) suppress dissent as part of the government crackdown which began in 2018 in response to social unrest.

While the legislature approved the changes on 21 January, authorities began swearing in the first 2,504 members of the volunteer police force six days earlier. With their faces concealed by black balaclavas, 1,204 voluntary police members were sworn in in Madriz department and 1,300 in Estelí department on 15 January, in ceremonies presided over by Francisco Díaz, the general director of the national police (PNN), whose daughter is married to Ortega’s son. Díaz is one of various senior officials blacklisted by Washington: the sanctions against him unveiled in 2018 were attributed to the fact that under his watch, the PNN had “engaged in serious human rights abuse against the people of Nicaragua, including extrajudicial killings”. This was an allusion to the PNN’s brutal crackdown on unrest following the 2018 protests, as directed by the Ortega government which a United Nations expert panel found in 2023 had committed crimes against humanity [SSR-23-04].

With PNN Inspector General Jaime Vanegas telling the local media on 17 February that over 50,000 people had been sworn in as members of the voluntary police, and First Lady and Vice President Rosario Murillo announcing on 25 February that a further 30,000 new members would be signed up, the changes have drawn concern from activists such as Juan Carlos Arce, of human rights NGO Colectivo de Derechos Humanos Nicaragua Nunca Más who warn that these represent a formalisation of parastate groups, known as ‘shock groups’. Indeed a 2021 report by the Organization of American States (OAS)’s Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) identifies such groups, which were formed in late 2007 and early 2008, as crucial to the suppression of dissent by the Ortega government [SSR-21-12].

Contempt

The ruling by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (Corte-IDH) regarding President Ortega’s 2011 re-election is unlikely to have much impact on the Nicaraguan government: in 2023 Nicaragua formally withdrew from the Organization of American States (OAS), accusing the OAS of meddling in the country’s domestic affairs. This followed condemnation by the OAS, along with much of the international community, of the controversial election in November 2021 which produced a re-election for Ortega but was widely slammed as a sham. In November 2022, the Corte-IDH declared the Nicaraguan government in contempt of court for having refused to heed earlier Corte-IDH rulings.

Corte-IDH rules against Ortega’s 2011 re-election

On 23 January the Costa Rica-based Inter-American Court of Human Rights (Corte-IDH), another arm of the OAS, ruled that the State of Nicaragua had violated the right to participate in government, judicial guarantees, and judicial protection, of Fabio Gadea Mantilla during the 2011 presidential elections. In that election Ortega defeated Gadea, of the Partido Liberal Independiente (PLI), by 62%-31%. Ortega, who had served one term (1985-1990) and was in the process of a second (2007-2012), was not eligible to run again due to a prohibition in the constitution (Art. 147) on presidents serving consecutive terms or more than two terms non-consecutively. However, in 2009 the supreme court (CSJ) controversially lifted the ban on consecutive presidential re-election (a move widely slammed as illegal given only the legislature was authorised to amend the constitution), thus enabling Ortega to run again.

In its ruling, the Corte-IDH concluded that “the lack of integrity of the electoral process” favoured Ortega’s reelection. In addition, it concluded that the CSJ and the electoral authorities (CSE) “showed bias and did not guarantee an effective judicial remedy to review decisions that questioned the irregularities of the proceedings”.