Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega has declared an end to general elections, claiming that opposition groups are backed by Washington and remnants of the former Somoza regime.<\/p>\n
According to the 80-year-old president, the days of allowing parties supported by “Yankees” and “somocistas”\u2014a term referring to the supporters of the former Somoza regime\u2014to return to power are over. Ortega, a leader of the Sandinista National Liberation Front that overthrew the regime in 1979, dismissed democratic opposition as foreign-backed interference.<\/p>\n
Leading opposition figure Felix Maradiaga, who was imprisoned between 2021 and 2023 before being stripped of his citizenship and exiled, described the move as a “declaration of fear.” Maradiaga stated that Ortega is attempting to ensure his project remains free from any democratic oversight.<\/p>\n
Ortega rose to power in 1979 and won the presidency in 1984, facing a civil war funded by the U.S. government under Ronald Reagan. He ceded power in 1990 following the victory of Violeta Chamorro, only to return to the presidency in 2007.<\/p>\n
Since his 2011 reelection, international organizations including the UN Human Rights Council have documented the country\u2019s slide into dictatorship. Following violent crackdowns on 2018 protests that resulted in hundreds of deaths, the 2021 elections were widely condemned as fraudulent by the EU, the U.S., and Human Rights Watch. As of 2025, a constitutional change has established Ortega as co-president alongside his wife.<\/p>\n
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Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega has declared an end to general elections, claiming that opposition groups are backed by Washington and remnants of the former Somoza regime. Ortega\u2019s Declaration Against Foreign Influence According to the 80-year-old president, the days of allowing parties supported by “Yankees” and “somocistas”\u2014a term referring to the supporters of the former Somoza […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wpai_generated_summary":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14958","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics-and-law"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bizonews.com\/pl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14958","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bizonews.com\/pl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bizonews.com\/pl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bizonews.com\/pl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bizonews.com\/pl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14958"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bizonews.com\/pl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14958\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bizonews.com\/pl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14958"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bizonews.com\/pl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14958"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bizonews.com\/pl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14958"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}