Q REPORTS (Felix Wiebrecht, Lecturer in Politics, University of Liverpool) Since being elected for a second term as Nicaraguan president in 2006, Daniel Ortega – the former Sandinista freedom fighter-turned-authoritarian leader – has extended his term of office several times. But last week he announced a new strategy for holding on to power. He declared that there will no longer be elections in the Central American country.
Making a speech to commemorate the anniversary of the 1979 revolution that toppled the Somoza dictatorship, which had ruled Nicaragua since 1937, he said: “The days when parties backed by the Yankees and the Somocistas would return to power are over – never again.” The legal changes are already moving through the country’s legislature. Nicaragua’s elections have long been rigged and repressive. But this marks a new scale of authoritarian rule.
The elimination of elections is a rare and extreme case, even in today’s landscape of authoritarian regimes. So this reflects a worrying trend of brazenness on the part of Nicaragua’s president. Most modern autocrats are what researchers call “spin dictators”.
They invest in a democratic disguise and the careful curation of a public image fostered by propaganda and misinformation. Elections play a central role in this playbook. Hence, most authoritarian regimes nowadays hold somewhat competitive multiparty elections – and only a handful of regimes have resisted the turn towards elections that took off in the 1990s and 2000s.
Among those are primarily hereditary monarchies such as Saudi Arabia and Brunei and the one-party state of Eritrea ruled by the People’s Front for Democracy and Justice (PFDJ). While there are differences in how non-democracies design their elections, they all share a playing field that is inherently tilted towards the incumbents. Widely used methods include restricting ballot access for genuine opposition candidates, manipulating electoral commissions and courts to favour the incumbent and controlling media coverage.
Incumbents also have the power to deploy state resources for campaigning while harassing or co-opting opposition figures. Although it is not unheard of that authoritarian incumbents also lose elections, these tools are designed to keep them in power. It is against this very playbook that Ortega’s decision now stands out.
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