KVIG Informative

Daniel Ortega said Nicaragua will “never again” hold elections. Twenty-nine OAS countries answered by invoking the organization’s highest diplomatic mechanism. Managua wasn’t even in the room: it withdrew from the OAS in 2023.

The Permanent Council of the Organization of American States voted Wednesday, August 19, to urgently convene a consultative meeting of foreign ministers over the situation in Nicaragua, after President Daniel Ortega declared the country would “never again” hold elections. The resolution passed with the support of 29 member states; Mexico abstained and Brazil voted against it.

Ortega made the declaration on July 19, at an event in Managua marking the 47th anniversary of the Sandinista revolution. “There will be no more elections here for them to try to seize the government, seize power,” he said, referring to the opposition. The announcement came nine days before the National Assembly’s leadership introduced, on July 28, a constitutional reform extending from six to seven years the term of the so-called “co-presidency” Ortega shares with his wife, Rosario Murillo, and making it renewable.

The reform doesn’t stop at the presidency. According to the text reviewed by Infobae, the bill enshrines in the constitution the exclusion of anyone the regime labels a “coup-monger” or “traitor to the homeland,” and extends that same seven-year term to the head of the Army, the directors of the National Police, and roughly 7,000 additional posts, both elected and legislatively confirmed. The ruling-party-controlled National Assembly is set to vote on it in its first legislative session on September 1.

The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights condemned both the announcement and the reform, reiterating its call for OAS member states to use the mechanisms available under the OAS Charter and the Inter-American Democratic Charter. A first attempt at a resolution, introduced on August 5, never came to a vote: according to former OAS Secretary General adviser Guillermo Belt, it lacked the 18 votes needed to guarantee passage.

Two weeks later, those votes materialized. The United States, along with Antigua and Barbuda, Argentina, Bolivia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Jamaica, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, the Dominican Republic and Trinidad and Tobago co-sponsored the measure that finally passed on August 19. U.S. Deputy Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs Michael Kozak called on the organization to show “more than words on paper,” saying member states “don’t have to sit idle there simply condemning actions.”

Under the OAS Charter, a consultative meeting of foreign ministers is the highest diplomatic mechanism available to the organization, reserved for matters of “urgent character and common interest.” It can lead to downgraded diplomatic relations or coordinated economic pressure, though expelling Nicaragua outright, as happened with Cuba in 1962, isn’t legally possible: the country already completed its formal withdrawal from the OAS in 2023, a process Ortega himself triggered.

Mexico justified its abstention by invoking dialogue. “We propose prioritizing dialogue, building bridges and seeking peaceful solutions, with full respect for the sovereignty and self-determination of peoples,” said Mexico’s mission, led by Alejandro Encinas. After the vote, Rosario Murillo called exiled opposition figures “mercenaries,” “traitors” and “cowards” in her daily message on state media, without directly mentioning the OAS.

Exiled opposition figure and former political prisoner Juan Sebastián Chamorro called the vote an “overwhelming victory for democracy in Nicaragua.” But the diplomatic win doesn’t change the calendar: the National Assembly is still on track to vote on the reform September 1, and Nicaragua, outside the OAS for three years now, is under no obligation to comply with any resolution the organization passes against it. The foreign ministers’ meeting still has no date.