They’ve been called “a parody,” “a sham,” and “the worst possible conditions” for a vote, but Nicaragua’s general elections are going ahead on Sunday anyway.
After an iron-fisted crackdown on opposition voices this year, Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega is widely expected to claim a fourth consecutive term at the polls this weekend, alongside his vice president and wife Rosario Murillo.
The vote is the first for Nicaragua since a wave of popular demonstrations in 2018 rattled the country, and the Ortega government is taking no chances, having spent the past months blocking political participation of potential rivals and closely controlling the electoral process.
Several possible candidates for the presidency have been detained in recent months. Journalist and former candidate Cristiana Chamorro Barrios — whose mother defeated Ortega at the polls in 1990 — was placed under house arrest this summer on nebulous charges (which she denies) over her management of a nonprofit. Her cousin, economist Juan Sebastián Chamorro García, who was running for president for another party, was also arrested.
In total, at least half a dozen likely presidential contenders have been arrested ahead of the vote, including former diplomat Arturo Cruz, political scientist Félix Maradiaga, journalist Miguel Mora Barberena, and rural labor leader Medardo Mairena Sequeira.
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Dozens of other prominent critics and opposition leaders have been detained and investigated for alleged national security concerns, according to Nicaraguan law enforcement — moves that much of the international community has criticized as political repression.
Nicaraguans will also cast votes for the country’s National Assembly this Sunday — though under the current conditions, Ortega’s Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) is expected to claim overwhelming victory. Other parties are in the running, but none are seen as significant challengers to the incumbent government, according to the Americas Society/Council of Americas.
Furthering concerns that the deck is stacked in the septuagenarian leader’s favor and that of his party, the country’s Ortega-aligned electoral council has limited campaigning and the eligibility of political parties — creating what the Organization of American States Secretary General Luiz Almagro described in May as “the worst possible circumstances for an electoral process.”
Misinformation and the manipulation of social networks have emerged as another possible contaminant in the electoral process. Facebook last week said that it had removed a troll farm of more than 1,000 Facebook and Instagram accounts backed by the government, Reuters reported. The accounts had been working to amplify pro-government content, according to the news agency.
Throughout it all, the specter of Covid-19 still looms over the vote. Though the country has officially counted fewer than 20,000 cases and just 209 deaths since the start of the pandemic, health experts say the reality could be more severe than reported. According to the Pan American Health Organization, less than 20% of Nicaragua’s population has been vaccinated

‘A parody of an election’
The Ortega government’s tactics to stifle competition have prompted condemnation from democracies around the world. At the height of the presidential candidates’ arrests this summer, Mexico and Argentina recalled their ambassadors for consultations, citing “worrying legal actions by the Nicaraguan government.”
During a November 3 meeting about a new report on Nicaragua’s political repression by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, US representative Bradley Freden described the Nicaraguan election as “nothing more than a sham.”
“The event that’s about to take place on November 7 is a parody of an election,” echoed Canadian representative Hugh Adsett.