Speaking on Sunday during an event marking the 47th anniversary of Nicaragua’s Sandinista Revolution, President Daniel Ortega declared that there will no longer be elections in Nicaragua as he seeks to prevent political opponents from taking control of the government.
“There will never be elections here again,” said Ortega at the event. “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.”
He specifically called out the United States for attempting to insert political opponents into elections. “Parties put in place by the Yankees, put in place by the Somoza regime, coming back to power — that story is over.”
It is the latest in a series of moves to preserve Ortega’s power, including changes last year that made his wife, Rosario Murillo, co-president of the country, and which extended the presidential term to six years. Ortega has been in power since 2007; it is his second term at the helm of the country, as he became leader of the Junta of National Reconstruction following the Nicaraguan Revolution in 1979, and then won the 1984 presidential election, serving until 1990 when he was defeated by Violeta Chamorro.
“Daniel Ortega’s declaration that under his family’s dictatorship, Nicaragua will never again hold elections lays bare their true authoritarian nature,” said Marco Rubio, the U.S. Secretary of State, in a statement. “Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo have abandoned even the pretense of popular consent.”
He went on to say that the Nicaraguan people have the right to choose their own leaders through democratic elections, and that “the United States calls on the international community to join forces to demonstrate to the Murillo-Ortega dictatorship that it cannot expect to maintain business as usual with other nations when it is thwarting the basic tenets of our democratic hemisphere.”
The next elections in Nicaragua were scheduled for November 2027, with the most recent having occurred in 2021. It remains to be seen if the elections will be outright canceled or if opposition parties will be prohibited from participating, as was the case in 2021.
Just what this means for the premium cigar industry is uncertain at the moment, but the news is notable as Nicaragua is home to numerous prominent companies, and the United States imports a significant of premium cigars made in the country. According to import numbers released by the Cigar Association of America, the United States imported 56.8 million handmade cigars from Nicaragua in the first quarter of 2026, which accounted for the majority of the handmade cigars into the U.S. during that period.
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