No more elections in Nicaragua. Daniel Ortega’s promise

He had only just severed diplomatic relations with Italy following Antonio Tajani’s request to extradite Alessio Casimirri, the Red Brigades member who murdered Aldo Moro. But now Daniel Ortega is going a step further, announcing that there will be no more elections in Nicaragua.

The 80-year-old president, who has been in office since 2007, spoke on Sunday, making his first public appearance in 61 days, during the ceremony marking the 47th anniversary of the Sandinista revolution. Addressing several thousand conscripted civil servants, he said that “there will be no more elections here, so that [the opposition parties] cannot attempt to seize power”. “We will work with the National Assembly and the relevant institutions on legislation, because we need laws that build a wall, a barrier, against the coup plotters and traitors who are selling off their country”.

Last year, Ortega pushed through a series of constitutional reforms that included extending the presidential term from five to six years and promoting his wife, Rosario Murillo – then vice-president – to the position of ‘co-president’. During his speech, Ortega referred to the raid on 3 January in Venezuela. “With all their might, they stormed the presidential palace, where Nicolás and his wife, Cilia, were present. They killed the entire security detail on duty – most of whom were Cuban – and took them away to imprison them in the United States. It is monstrous.” He went on to explain that preventing the opposition from returning to power would be necessary to protect the country from the “coup plotters” who, he claimed, were behind the nationwide protests of 2018, when, according to the UN, his regime carried out a violent crackdown that resulted in the deaths of over 350 people, the wounding of hundreds, the imprisonment of thousands and the exile of nearly a million Nicaraguans.

Once again, the UN has directly accused Ortega and Murillo of the death of the 73-year-old indigenous leader and MP Brooklyn Rivera, who spent almost three years imprisoned incommunicado for opposing the handover of indigenous lands to Chinese interests (the regime has handed over 10 per cent of the national territory to the Chinese). The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights has just requested information from the Ortega dictatorship regarding the fate of Bishop Juan Abelardo Mata Guevara, who has been missing for over two weeks. According to organisations such as Human Rights Watch, there are around fifty political prisoners in Nicaragua. The regime has stripped 546 people of their citizenship and shut down over 5,600 non-governmental organisations, 29 universities and 58 media outlets. Ortega is also accused of torture, enforced disappearances, the killing of opponents abroad and the suppression of religious activity.

The rift with Italy came after Tajani said at the EPP summit in Madrid that Nicaragua “is harbouring dangerous Red Brigades terrorists, such as Alessio Casimirri”. Moro’s assassin has been in Nicaragua for 43 years; he has been a Nicaraguan citizen since 1988 and runs a catering empire. But Ortega also has Licio Gelli’s son and grandson in his employ. Maurizio Gelli served as ambassador to Uruguay from 2013 to 2017, when his son Licio took over the post. He then went to Canada and, in 2023, to Spain, from where he was expelled on 25 January in retaliation for the expulsion of the Spanish representative in Managua.