Secretary of State Marco Rubio called Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega a dictator after the Central American leader vowed to abolish elections.
“Daniel Ortega’s declaration that under his family’s dictatorship Nicaragua will never again hold elections lays bare their true authoritarian nature,” a State Department statement released Tuesday said. “Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo have abandoned even the pretense of popular consent.”
The State Department called for the right of Nicaraguan citizens to elect leaders through democratic elections and said the Ortega-Murillo dictatorship “cannot expect to maintain business as usual with other nations.”
Ortega and Murillo, the leader’s wife and co-president, are accused of being dictators by the U.N. Human Rights Council, which has also accused the country of committing frequent human rights violations.
Ortega explicitly said on Sunday that there “won’t be any more elections here for them to try to seize the government and seize power,” according to a translation by Reuters.
The remarks were delivered during a commemoration of the Sandinista National Liberation Front, a group that overthrew the previous dictator, President Anastasio Somoza Debayle, in 1979. Ortega served as a key Sandinista leader in the revolution, and his Sunday speech was the 80-year-old’s first public appearance in two months.
”The days when parties backed by the Yankees [United States] and the Somocistas would return to power are over. Never again,” he said, referencing the U.S.-backed Somoza family dictatorship he helped overthrow.
A RENEWED WAR MEANS RENEWED GOP MIDTERM WORRIES
Former Nicaraguan presidential candidate Felix Maradiaga said Ortega buried Nicaraguan democracy a long time ago, the New York Times reported.
“As long as Daniel Ortega controls the Nicaraguan state, Nicaragua cannot have free elections,” Maradiaga said.