Nicaragua Officially Becomes a Family Dictatorship

By Elliott Abrams

Wednesday, July 29, 2026

 

Even the most repressive dictatorships hold some kind of elections — the tribute vice pays to virtue, as the old definition of hypocrisy goes. That’s why communist regimes always called themselves the “People’s Republic.” In March of this year, North Korea held parliamentary elections, and Kim Jong-un’s Workers’ Party announced that it had won 99.93 percent of the vote. There’s a long tradition here; in 1937, Stalin awarded himself and the Bolshevik Party 99.3 percent of the vote for the Supreme Soviet.

 

But Nicaragua’s dictator Daniel Ortega is now dispensing even with these electoral frauds. On July 19, the anniversary of the Sandinista takeover in 1979, Ortega announced that elections in Nicaragua are coming to an end. “There won’t be any more elections here for them to try to seize the government and seize power,” Ortega said. “The days when parties backed by the Yankees (United States) and the Somocistas would return to power are over — never again!” The next formal step will be taken when his puppet parliament cancels the scheduled November 2027 elections entirely.

 

Nicaragua is now a family dictatorship just like that of the Kims in North Korea — or the Somoza family that the Sandinistas displaced in 1979. Nicaragua today has two “co-presidents,” Ortega and his wife, Rosario Murillo. Ortega is 80 and in poor health, so he and his wife changed the constitution last year to assure that Murillo takes sole power when he dies. And in the wings are their sons: Laureano, a “presidential adviser,” Rafael, who heads the national oil company, Maurice, and Daniel, all under U.S. sanctions for money laundering, each waiting for his turn. The only difference between the Ortega family tyranny and that of the Kims in North Korea or the Somozas is that they had phony elections and Ortega is dispensing with that formality.

 

The overall human rights situation in Nicaragua is awful. As Freedom House details in its latest (2025) report:

 

The 2006 election of Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega began a period of democratic deterioration marked by the consolidation of all branches of government under his party’s control, the limitation of fundamental freedoms, and unchecked corruption in government. In 2018, state forces, with the aid of informally allied armed groups, responded to a mass antigovernment movement with violence and repression. The rule of law collapsed as the government moved to put down the movement, with rights monitors reporting killings, extrajudicial detentions, disappearances, and torture. Since then, Ortega’s regime has consolidated its power by engaging in surveillance, curtailing press freedoms, arresting political opponents, sending opposing voices into exile, and stripping away their citizenship.

 

The regime has jailed or expelled bishops and priests as part of its repression of the Roman Catholic Church. As the Catholic news site Zenit put it,

 

The scale of the phenomenon is striking. . . . 309 priests and religious sisters have been exiled, expelled, or denied entry into Nicaragua in recent years; more than 95 percent of them are Nicaraguan nationals. . . . The repression has also hollowed out diocesan leadership. Four dioceses — Jinotega, Matagalpa, Estelí and Siuna — are currently without their bishops in residence. . . . Carlos Herrera, Bishop of Jinotega and president of the episcopal conference, was expelled in November 2024 after criticizing a local mayor aligned with the government who had disrupted a Mass with loud music.

 

In 2024, the regime started banning public assemblies celebrating Good Friday, Easter, and Lent.

 

The extremes of repression have soured even top Sandinista leaders — including the longtime minister of defense, Daniel Ortega’s brother Humberto. In May 2024, Humberto Ortega was arrested by security forces and placed under house arrest after criticizing the regime in an interview with a foreign press outlet. He died while under house arrest in September 2024.

 

Venezuela and Cuba have gotten considerable attention from the Trump administration, but Nicaragua much less so despite the deepening dictatorship. These three countries represented the last leftist, anti-American regimes in this hemisphere. With Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro in jail and his regime either kowtowing to Trump’s instructions or (one hopes) moving toward free elections, there are two to go.

 

Nicaragua should present an easier case than Cuba. Cuba has not had multiparty elections since 1952, while Violeta Chamorro beat the Sandinistas in a free election in Nicaragua in 1990. Nicaragua has not experienced a Cuban-style regime until the last decade, making it easier to restore both free elections and democratic institutions of government. The state and Communist Party bureaucracies built by Fidel and Raúl Castro since 1959 do not exist in Nicaragua. Banned in Nicaragua but possible to restore are the political parties and their leaders, plus journalists who worked in free newspapers and TV stations. And the hundreds of opposition political leaders expelled in the last decade can return home and take up their work again.

 

The moment for change may be approaching. Murillo (sanctioned by the United States in 2018 for human rights abuses and corruption) has been purging many of her husband’s closest advisers as well as former Sandinista militants and public officials, part of her preparation to rule alone. But that will leave her with a narrow base of support. When Daniel dies or becomes incapacitated, it remains to be seen if she can seize all the reins of power — becoming president and perhaps naming her sons as vice presidents — and whether the military will go along with a family dictatorship.

 

The attention being given to Venezuela and Cuba is warranted, but Nicaragua’s future deserves the Trump administration’s attention too — and merits a serious program to bring down the Ortega-Murillo regime and restore legitimate, competitive democracy. This can be the hemisphere of freedom and one where oppression does not create massive refugee flows. Nicaraguans need U.S. encouragement and help to rid themselves of a vicious, corrupt, and brutal regime, and U.S. policy for this hemisphere should include another chance at freedom for Nicaragua.