Caribbean & Central America - September 2026

Nicaragua’s authoritarian co-president Daniel Ortega made international headlines in July, declaring elections would no longer take place in the country. There has effectively been no free vote in Nicaragua in years, with the Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional (FSLN) government having dismantled all democratic institutions, a process which accelerated following the launch of a brutal crackdown on dissent in April 2018 in response to social unrest. However, Ortega’s announcement was still eye-catching given the iron grip that he and his wife, co-president Rosario Murillo, have on the country’s institutions. Gustavo Porras, the president of the legislature, has since appeared to row back, saying elections would still take place but under further proposed changes to the country’s constitution which would effectively exclude the opposition. However, this has done little to dampen international outrage.

Ortega declared that “there will not be elections here again” on 19 July during an event held to mark the 47^th anniversary of the overthrow of the Somoza dictatorship (1936-1979). The next election was due to take place in November 2027 after presidential terms were extended to six years from five as per a constitutional reform package which took effect last year which further concentrated power in the hands of Ortega and Murillo [SSR-01-25]. In the most recent elections in 2021, from which genuine opposition parties were barred and seven presidential candidates (among nearly 40 opposition figures) were jailed, Ortega claimed around 75% of the vote. However, the contest was blasted as fraudulent by the Organization of American States (OAS) and foreign community, resulting in multiple sanctions from the US and European Union, among others. This condemnation ultimately led the Ortega government to withdraw Nicaragua from the OAS, which took effect in 2023.

With the international community having already applied multiple sanctions to Managua in recent years over democracy and human rights concerns, which ultimately have failed to act as a deterrent, Ortega’s call to scrap elections altogether provoked fresh outrage. On 4 August 10 OAS member states held a meeting of consultation of regional foreign ministers – an extraordinary emergency mechanism reserved for threats to hemispheric peace and security. This was the first time the mechanism had been invoked to discuss a political crisis in Nicaragua since 1978, during the country’s revolution. While the ensuing OAS statement condemned Ortega’s comments regarding the suppression of elections, it ultimately failed to back up its rhetoric with any threat of action, while the fact that Nicaragua no longer recognises the OAS’ authority casts further doubt as to its impact.

Constitutional reform

In an interview broadcast on 6 August with Silvana Jarquín León, a Nicaragua-based correspondent for Russian state-controlled TV network RT, the head of Nicaragua’s national assembly, Gustavo Porras, said that legislators were working on a constitutional reform which would expand the presidential term from six to seven years. He added that under the changes, those whom the regime labels as “coup plotters” and “traitors to the homeland” would not be permitted to participate in elections. Such terms are widely used by Managua to criminalise dissent.

Latest UN condemnation

In one recent sign of foreign alarm regarding the state of human rights in the country, on 13 July, the United Nations Group of Human Rights Experts on Nicaragua (GHREN) denounced the Ortega-Murillo government’s “sudden revocation of credentials for numerous lawyers and notaries”. It warned that the move “effectively erased a vital part of the nation’s legal profession overnight and stripped citizens of their right to legal defence”, while noting it is not a new development, with authorities “arbitrarily and permanently” suspending at least 28 lawyers in 2023, amid “a sweeping purge of the judicial system” underway since October 2023 [SSR-24-02]. According to GHREN, since then, eight magistrates have quit or been forced out, and over 1,000 judicial employees have been dismissed. One of GHREN’s members, Reed Brody, a US human rights lawyer, said that “this silent purge of the legal profession is one more nail in the coffin of the independence of justice in Nicaragua: first they took the judges, now they are taking the lawyers”.