Daniel Ortega, Nicaragua’s octogenarian authoritarian leader, declared that he would seek to abolish elections in his country according to The New York Times
“There will never be elections here again,” Ortega declared during a government rally to celebrate the 47th anniversary of his leftist movement’s revolution.
The authoritarian leader said the opposition is trying to use the elections to “seize the government, seize power.”
British newspaper The Guardian writes that Ortega said he would work with the Nicaraguan legislature to “build a wall” around the country’s opposition, blocking their way to power.
“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 Nicaraguan leader assured.
The announcement was made during the commemoration of the 1979 Sandinista revolution, which overthrew the US-backed dictatorship of Anastasio Somoza.
However, since Ortega’s rise to power, he and his wife and co-president, Rosario Murillo, have been accused of eroding the democracy of the Central American country with a population of seven million.
With this decision, Ortega and Murillo have sealed the country’s transition to a full-fledged family dictatorship,” said Tiziano Breda, senior Latin America analyst at the NGO Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project, to The Guardian.
“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,” Breda added.
NPR explains that back in 2017, Nicaragua went through mass protests against Ortega and Murillo that were violently crushed by the regime.
Since then, the couple has introduced changes to reaffirm their power, such as extending presidential terms.
Unsurprisingly, the United States criticized the latest statements by the Nicaraguan leader.
“The Nicaraguan people have the right to choose their own leaders through democratic elections,” US Secretary of State Marco Rubio declared, as quoted by the Anadolu Agency.
According to Rubio, Ortega and Murillo have abandoned any pretense of democratic institutions in Nicaragua.
The US Secretary of State called on the international community “to join forces to demonstrate to the Murillo-Ortega dictatorship that it cannot expect to maintain business as usual with other nations when it is thwarting the basic tenets of our democratic hemisphere.”
During his speech, Ortega also condemned the Trump administration for extraditing Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro to face charges in New York.
With the US government’s direct intervention in Venezuela, where they extracted Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores, maybe Ortega and Murillo are afraid they are next on the list.
