I vaguely recall reading Ron Radosh’s 2021 Quileette essay “Sandinista! The US Left and Nicaragua.” However, while my attention was turned elsewhere, Nicaragua’s National Assembly amended the constitution to allow the president to run for an unlimited number of five-year terms. Given the fact that Sandinista Commie Daniel Ortega was president, that was a bad sign.
As I understand the relevant developments, it got worse in 2025 when the Constitution of Nicaragua was amended to provide for the powers of the presidency to be exercised by male and female co-presidents. The assembly extended the presidential term to six years and declared Ortega’s vice president — wife Rosario Murillo — co-president. Codependent no more!
For those of us who had turned whatever attention we paid to Nicaragua elsewhere when Ortega was defeated for reelection in 1990, as I think I did but for the Radosh essay, Diego Ruiz updated the story in 2025:
Daniel Ortega returned to power in 2007 and never again repeated the “bourgeois nonsense” of 1990. He immediately set about consolidating his grip on every institution of government. He took control of the legislature, appointed a docile Supreme Court to brush aside all constitutional impediments to his continued rule, and installed an equally malleable Supreme Electoral Council to rubber stamp his several rigged reelections. He co-opted, imprisoned, or banned any political opposition figure that might have threatened his hold on power—including Doña Violeta’s daughter Cristiana, who has been held under house arrest since she tried to run for president in 2021. And he engineered a brutal crackdown on internal dissent that has sent an estimated 10% of the Nicaraguan population into exile.
Now comes the news that Ortega is dispensing with the facade of elections:
Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega on Sunday said his country is moving toward not holding a presidential election next year, appearing to maintain his shared control over the country with his co-president and wife, Rosario Murillo.
Ortega said at a government rally marking the 47th anniversary of the Sandinista revolution’s takeover of the country that there “won’t be any more elections here for them to try to seize the government and seize power,” according to a translation of the rally from Reuters.
I have to say it seems a tad redundant. It calls to mind O’Brien’s instruction to Winston Smith in the course of Smith’s interrogation at the Ministry of Love in 1984: “[A]lways — do not forget this, Winston — always there will be the intoxication of power, constantly increasing and constantly growing subtler. Always, at every moment, there will be the thrill of victory, the sensation of trampling on an enemy who is helpless. If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face — for ever.”
