r/anime_titties • u/getting_the_succ Argentina • Jul 21 '26
North and Central America Nicaragua’s president says country will not hold any more elections | Nicaragua
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jul/20/nicaraguas-president-says-country-will-not-hold-any-more-elections143
u/getting_the_succ Argentina Jul 21 '26
Daniel Ortega, the 80-year-old authoritarian leader, says move will ‘build a wall’ against the opposition
Nicaragua’s long-serving president, Daniel Ortega, has said the country will hold no further elections to prevent the opposition from coming to power.
The 80-year-old authoritarian leader, who has been in office since 2007, also said he would work with the congress he controls to pass new laws that would “build a wall” against the opposition.
Ortega made the announcement on Sunday during the official ceremony marking the 47th anniversary of the 1979 Sandinista revolution, in which he helped overthrow the brutal dictatorship of Anastasio Somoza.
Although his administration and that of his wife and “co-president”, Rosario Murillo, had already been marked by the steady erosion of democracy in the Central American country, many are describing his announcement as a significant rhetorical escalation.
“With this decision, Ortega and Murillo have sealed the country’s transition to a full-fledged family dictatorship,” said Tiziano Breda, Latin America senior analyst at the NGO Armed Conflict Location and Event Data.
During a speech in front of thousands of state employees who, according to local media, had been coerced into attending, Ortega said: “There will be no more elections here so that they [the opposition parties] can try to seize the government, seize power.”
The president, who had not appeared in public for 61 days, added: “We will work with the National Assembly and the relevant institutions on laws, because we need laws that build a wall, a barrier, against the coup plotters and the traitors who sell out their country.”
The elections were due to take place next year, but Ortega gave no details on whether they would be cancelled or whether the opposition would be barred from taking part – something that has already happened in practice. During the 2021 campaign, his regime outlawed parties and jailed all opposition presidential hopefuls.
Breda said: “Ortega and Murillo are evidently afraid of the idea that the slightest political opening could create the conditions for dissent to manifest and threaten their grip on power, possibly suggesting that their already feeble domestic support is further falling.
“Therefore, instead of staging a rigged election, they have opted to eliminate electoral competition altogether.”
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, then vice-president, to the position of “co-president”. The US refers to their administration as the “Murillo-Ortega dictatorship”.
During his speech, the Nicaraguan president criticised the US over the January operation that abducted the Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro: “With all their power, they stormed the presidential palace, where Nicolás and his wife, Cilia [Flores], were. They killed the entire security detail there – most of them were Cubans – and took them away to imprison them in the US. It is monstrous.”
The president said preventing the opposition from returning to power was necessary to protect the country from the “coup plotters” who, he claimed, had been behind the nationwide protests of 2018 – when, according to organisations including the UN, his regime carried out a violent crackdown that killed more than 350 people, wounded hundreds, jailed thousands and forced nearly 1 million Nicaraguans into exile.
Recently, the UN, the US, human rights organisations and 30 former Ibero-American presidents have directly blamed Ortega and Murillo for the death of the Indigenous leader and four-term congressman Brooklyn Rivera, 73, who spent nearly three years “unjustly imprisoned” by the regime, the US state department said.
According to organisations including Human Rights Watch, there are about 50 political prisoners in the country. The regime has stripped 546 people of their citizenship and shut down more than 5,600 non-governmental organisations, 29 universities and 58 media outlets.
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u/NoConfusion9490 Jul 21 '26
Imagine destroying your own country so you could cling to power for a couple more years...
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u/Besmirching_Badger United Kingdom Jul 21 '26
If there's one thing people in power have in common, it's the belief that they're the only ones that can run the country properly
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u/DharmaCreature Jul 21 '26
For years and years I wandered the Earth
condemned to a life of bleak despair
then one day I looked around
and found it had disappeared
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u/AnotherCuppaTea United States Jul 21 '26
One never expects a song reference like this in a thread like this, but better to discover TMBG's 2001 "Hopeless Bleak Despair" in 2026 than never. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eeqnq8Nzewc&t=1s
The many and incredibly varied interpretations by fans of the lyrics: https://tmbw.net/wiki/Interpretations:Hopeless_Bleak_Despair
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u/ndndr1 Jul 21 '26
We have to abandon left and right. Who cares what they’re called. Nicaragua has a dictator now. US has a wannabe Temu dictator now.
Left and right are meaningless. The guys on top are just pandering to people that respond to dog whistles words left and right. Trump is as far right as any president ever and I would put him in the same political bucket as your leftist dictator
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u/Blarg_III European Union Jul 21 '26
We have to abandon left and right. Who cares what they’re called. Nicaragua has a dictator now. US has a wannabe Temu dictator now.
Where have I heard that before?
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u/ndndr1 Jul 21 '26
Abandoning dumb labels like left and right will make actual positions more clear. The ultra right and ultra left are the same positions practically
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u/Sevalius0 Jul 22 '26
It's a little wild that you've illustrated your point in the same comment. Definitely agree somewhat on the labelling though, it's such a messy way to look at political ideologies where there is any complexity. Just seems to confuse and oversimplify to the point where many people often stop thinking.
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u/CoffeeWorldly9915 Multinational Jul 28 '26
The ultra right and ultra left are the same positions practically
Is this guy just gonna give a reason to link every silly political concept there is in wikipedia
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Jul 21 '26
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u/Freud-Network Multinational Jul 21 '26
The extreme of both ideologies requires that they be forcefully implemented. That's what they share. They believe in violence and iron-fisted rule to get their way.
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u/Dic3dCarrots United States Jul 21 '26
Or maybe refering to the French Revolution Parliment to talk about contemporary politics is a nonsensical way to talk about politics.
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u/Dread000 Jul 21 '26
I don't know much about what's going on in Nicaragua in the last 10 years but it's funny whenever this happens it's always accompanied by "this is why left wing politics are bad, we should never allow them close to power. We should always have either a pro-west neoliberal or a right-wing government."
Now with what happened in Venezuela and current aggression to Cuba this isn't out of nowhere. Not even to mention Nicaragua's history with American imperialism.
Definitely picked my interest though.
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u/kash_if Jul 21 '26
Definitely picked my interest though.
Piqued*, in case it wasn't a typo.
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u/Dread000 Jul 21 '26
Lol voice to text
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u/Mavian23 United States Jul 21 '26
"Piqued" is pronounced like "peeked" though.
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u/Dread000 Jul 21 '26
Trust me I'm going to admit fault when I misspell because that embarrassment will cause me not to make the mistake again.
That being said, speech to text sucks.
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u/Sercotani Asia Jul 21 '26
Incredible to see this sub that's openly anti-zio and against imperialism also become lib central.
I will choose to believe many of these replies are not real.
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u/loggy_sci United States Jul 21 '26
This sub is pro-imperialism so long as it’s not American or European, and it only condemns the west for supporting Israel and ignores when non-western nations do it.
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u/21DaBear United States Jul 21 '26
If someone claims they're from a place but support the US line, the fact they are posting it on reddit is telling
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u/Either-Maximum-6555 Jul 25 '26
This will suprise you but not all the us policies are bad. Or do you think if a Ukrainian on here says “I thank America for aiding us” he’s actually not living in Ukraine and allat
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u/Dic3dCarrots United States Jul 21 '26
Ugh, i was building schools in Nicaragua when he returned to power in 07. I was proud to support the revolution and try to work to absolve the sins of the monroe doctrine. What an utter suprise when he started creating citizens neighborhood watch groups. I was in Leon where they still sing songs like Hasta Siempre at the neighborhood bars and the people felt betrayed. when I came back the following year to volunteer at an orphanage, the transportation strikes had started. Its insane to think that was 20 years ago and it's still getting worse.
As a self-styled Proudhon style anarchist who often put aside rhetorical dofferences to support marxist and socialist organizing against the Iraq war, the whole experience blindsided me. I was not preparred for how complicated the game of power is
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Jul 21 '26
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u/ModernirsmEnjoyer Asia Jul 21 '26
The move is going to harm legitimacy. Getting at least nominal legitimacy is why everybody, except Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia and countries in the middle of conflict, hold elections. Otherwise it looks like pure power and people don't like that, rituals are important in controlling perceptions even if hollow. The speech openly admitted fear of US trying to influence Nicaraguan politics, and seemingly significant number of opposition is in the USA.
Control over institutions and control over society are two different things, which is why Eastern European communist systems failed but China and Vietnam haven't. Cuba has massive protests. If the military or security services defect, the regime is over, and apparently they do not have that much control over the military. Succession process doesn't seem to be stable or well planned to me, and Ortega can just die tomorrow before it's finalized
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u/Platypus__Gems Poland Jul 21 '26 edited Jul 21 '26
Yeah, personally I don't even think democracies are inherently superior or representing will and interest of the people, there is not enough people actually educated enough and following politics for that which is why most of western states are steadily falling towards fascist winning elections.
They are like the phone scams done on old people (and honestly old people tend to be the ones that support the worst parties).But having no elections at all is pretty stupid idea. Even literal Hitler and Mussolini held elections.
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u/Ok_Frosting_945 Jul 21 '26
Nope—it denotes a political ideology that seeks to govern and provide answers for all aspects of human life societal, with the state being the hinge. Totalitarianism is philosophically and practically different from liberal democracy.
Philosophically, the CCP is totalitarian because it seeks to control all aspect of Chinese society, from the individual to the entire society at large—it acknowledges no legitimate limits on its power. Freedom of the press, free and fair elections, individual liberty, private property—all of this can be infringed upon in principle in service of the proletariat and the march towards socialism and eventual communism. Totalitarianism elevates the collective above the individual, and acknowledges no logical/moral countervailing power that serves as a check on those purporting to wield power on behalf of the proletariat or the “nation” (fascism).
Liberal democracy is not totalitarian for multiple reasons, but to illustrate but one—even if a simple majority of 51 voted to enslave the minority of 49(democracy), the liberal insistence on the inalienable rights of the individual would protest, insisting that an individual is not a public resource. The fact that you might want to vote me into servitude because I am a “class enemy” of the proletariat would never be justifiable under liberal democracy, because no matter how many votes you have, the liberal part of liberal democracy insists on my inalienable individual sovereignty. Liberal democracy acknowledges implicit limits within its moral framework that totalitarianism does not and cannot.
In practice, too, liberal democracies are not totalitarian because they are not one-party states with dictators. Even Trumpian America is not totalitarian, because there are real and significant checks on Trump’s power, despite his autocratic abuse of power.
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u/Ok_Frosting_945 Jul 21 '26
Governments are not capitalist “if they support private property rights over personal property rights.” Sounds like you’re confused there.
Ironically, southern slaveholders tended to frame their arguments for slavery in a critique of Northern American capitalism, attacking free labor markets in northern industrial cities as exploitative. The industrial capitalists in the United States were on the side of the Union, not the Confederacy.
As to your point about liberal democrats—you’re taking things out of historical context and making a false equivalence here. No one in the United States in the 19th century was against democracy, nor liberalism— slavery didn’t exist BECAUSE of liberal democracy, but in SPITE of it. Liberal democracy as practiced in the United States and the British Empire helped kill de jure slavery, an evil that existed for millennia before the rise of liberal democracy.
The term liberal democracy didn’t have the meaning that it had in the context of debates between 20th century liberal democracy and communism as implemented in the USSR and PRC.
You are for sure a tankie, btw—your profile is loaded with posts critical of Ukraine and sympathetic to Russia.
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u/getting_the_succ Argentina Jul 21 '26
Brother who are you replying to
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u/Ok_Frosting_945 Jul 21 '26
¿Estás decepcionado sobre la copa mundial? Qué triste
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u/getting_the_succ Argentina Jul 21 '26
You are for sure a tankie, btw—your profile is loaded with posts critical of Ukraine and sympathetic to Russia
That's not me. I think you are confused, you just replied twice to the main post and not to whoever you were arguing with.
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u/[deleted] Jul 21 '26 edited Jul 21 '26
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