Nicaragua’s president says country will not hold any more elections

Daniel Ortega made the announcement on Sunday during the official ceremony marking the 47th anniversary of the 1979 Sandinista revolution. Photograph: Cesar Perez/El 19 DIGITAL/AFP/Getty Images View image in fullscreen Daniel Ortega made the announcement on Sunday during the official ceremony marking the 47th anniversary of the 1979 Sandinista revolution. Photograph: Cesar Perez/El 19 DIGITAL/AFP/Getty Images Nicaragua’s president says country will not hold any more elections Daniel Ortega, the 80-year-old authoritarian leader, says move will ‘build a wall’ against the opposition Nicaragua’s long-serving president, Daniel Ortega , has said the country will hold no further elections to prevent the opposition from coming to power. The 80-year-old authoritarian leader, who has been in office since 2007, also said he would work with the congress he controls to pass new laws that would “build a wall” against the opposition. Ortega made the announcement on Sunday during the official ceremony marking the 47th anniversary of the 1979 Sandinista revolution, in which he helped overthrow the brutal dictatorship of Anastasio Somoza. Although his administration and that of his wife and “co-president”, Rosario Murillo, had already been marked by the steady erosion of democracy in the Central American country, many are describing his announcement as a significant rhetorical escalation. “With this decision, Ortega and Murillo have sealed the country’s transition to a full-fledged family dictatorship,” said Tiziano Breda, Latin America senior analyst at the NGO Armed Conflict Location and Event Data. During a speech in front of thousands of state employees who, according to local media , had been coerced into attending, Ortega said: “There will be no more elections here so that they [the opposition parties] can try to seize the government, seize power.” The president, who had not appeared in public for 61 days, added: “We will work with the National Assembly and the relevant institutions on laws, because we need laws that build a wall, a barrier, against the coup plotters and the traitors who sell out their country.” The elections were due to take place next year, but Ortega gave no details on whether they would be cancelled or whether the opposition would be barred from taking part – something that has already happened in practice. During the 2021 campaign, his regime outlawed parties and jailed all opposition presidential hopefuls. View image in fullscreen Daniel Ortega last year promoted his wife, then vice-president, to the position of ‘co-president’. Photograph: Cesar Perez/El 19 DIGITAL/AFP/Getty Images Breda said: “Ortega and Murillo are evidently afraid of the idea that the slightest political opening could create the conditions for dissent to manifest and threaten their grip on power, possibly suggesting that their already feeble domestic support is further falling. Therefore, instead of staging a rigged election, they have opted to eliminate electoral c