“The Trump administration and the international community will not stand by while the dictatorship of (Rosario) Murillo and (Daniel) Ortega intensifies internal repression and generates instability that threatens the national security of the United States.”

That was the warning that Marco Rubio, the US Secretary of State, issued this Tuesday in a message shared on the social network X.

This is the reaction to an appearance by Ortega on Sunday, during which the Nicaraguan president said that there will be no more elections in Nicaragua.

“Let them forget, there will be no elections here again,” said the president during an event commemorating the 47th anniversary of the Sandinista Revolution held in Managua.

“There will be no elections again for them (the opposition) to try to capture the government, capture power,” added Ortega, who at 80 years old presides over Nicaragua with his wife, Rosario Murillo.

Likewise, he announced that the National Assembly, controlled by the ruling party, will approve laws to "put a wall, a block for the coup plotters, for those who sell the country."

“No matter how much money the Yankees (United States) give them, they won't be able to,” he asserted in a speech that was televised throughout the country.

For Rubio, head of US diplomacy, these statements “demonstrate their cowardice and their fear of the will of the Nicaraguan people.”

Furthermore, in a statement released by the State Department, titled “A call to action,” Rubio states that Ortega's words during the event “reveal the true authoritarian nature” of the president and his co-president.

“They have abandoned even the appearance of having popular consent,” the text emphasizes.

Already in June, Rubio described the “Murillo-Ortega dictatorship” as “an enemy of humanity,” while the US restricted the lives of 100 Nicaraguan officials after the death of opposition leader Brooklyn Rivera.

Nicaragua was due to hold presidential elections at the end of 2026, but last year the ruling party approved a questioned constitutional reform that postponed the elections until 2027. However, now Ortega's statements suggest that even that electoral event may not be held.

“Incompatible with the principles of democracy”

The US Secretary of State has not been the only one to react to Ortega's announcement that there will no longer be elections in the Central American country.

Along the same lines, the Office of Western Hemisphere Affairs (WOLA) requested international collaboration “to guarantee that the right to free elections is respected in Nicaragua.”

Likewise, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) condemned the statements of the Nicaraguan president, and assured that these are “incompatible with the principles of representative democracy.”

Meanwhile, for the opposition in Nicaragua, the ruler's message constitutes confirmation of the end of democracy in his country.

“Ortega buried Nicaraguan democracy a long time ago,” Félix Maradiaga, former presidential candidate in 2021, told The New York Times, who was arrested, expelled from the race and later exiled to the United States in 2023.

“This is simply an expression that unequivocally demonstrates how the mask of the supposed legality that it was trying to maintain fell away,” he added.

The Renacer party spoke out in similar terms.

“The regime stops pretending that there is political competition and publicly confirms that for years it has not governed by the consent of the citizens, but by force,” the group stated, according to the Spanish agency EFE.

International election observers have warned for years about fraudulent elections in Nicaragua.

The most recent, those of 2021, were marked by the absence of candidates with the possibility of taking the presidency from Ortega, after the arrest of the main opposition leaders during the previous months.

The Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) was then declared the winner with 75.92% of the support.

That generated the rejection of a large part of the international and regional community, the US going so far as to describe the elections as a “pantomime.”

At that time, Ortega rejected the international questions that arose, as he said, from those who “continue with their colonialist practices.”

The Nicaraguan leader has directed the destinies of the Central American country for almost three decades, divided into two stages, and in recent years with Murillo as official co-president.

The first stage began in July 1979, when the Sandinista Revolution overthrew the dictatorship of Anastasio Somoza. However, 11 years later he lost the 1990 presidential elections to Violeta Barrios de Chamorro.

However, in 2007 the former guerrilla returned to the presidency through the polls and, since then, has remained in power through what experts and adversaries denounce is a combination of repression and legal reforms that, in practice, have stifled dissent and outlawed opposition parties.

At the beginning of 2025, the Ortega government promoted a profound reform of the Constitution that, in addition to making Murillo co-president, extended the presidential term and eliminated institutional checks and balances.

These changes were harshly criticized by the United Nations, the Organization of American States (OAS), the United States, the European Parliament and various sectors of the Nicaraguan opposition.

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