US Calls on Partner Nations to Stop ‘Business as Usual’ With Nicaragua

The United States on Sept. 2 urged its international partners to stop doing “business as usual” with Nicaragua, and U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced plans to address human rights violations after the country’s Marxist-Leninist leaders banned open elections.

“Yesterday, the Murillo-Ortega’s National Assembly gutted what was left of Nicaragua’s democracy in the second constitutional rewrite in two years,” Rubio stated in a post on X.

The United States will implement measures at the next Organization of American States Foreign Ministerial, Rubio said.

“Dictatorships that deny the unalienable rights of their citizens should not enjoy the same economic or political benefits as governments committed to defending hemispheric peace and security,” Rubio said in a statement.

Nicaragua’s congress passed a constitutional reform backed by President Daniel Ortega on Sept. 1 that bans opposition parties from participating in elections and extends presidential terms from six to seven years.

U.S. Rep. María Elvira Salazar (R-Fla.), whose family was exiled from Cuba, agreed with Rubio’s reaction to Nicaragua’s new laws.

“I’ve said it before: after Cuba, Nicaragua must be next. Ortega and Murillo are writing democracy’s death certificate to make their family dictatorship permanent. Their impunity must end. No more business as usual,” Salazar posted on X.

Murillo announced the amendment would be ratified in a second vote starting Jan. 18, according to Nicaraguan law.

Several Central American countries, including Bolivia, Brazil, and Chile, criticized Ortega’s July announcement, characterizing it a setback for democracy in the region.

In 2024, Ortega’s ruling party approved extending his presidential term from five to six years and naming his poet wife Rosario Murillo, who was vice president, as co-president. The party also postposed presidential elections to 2027.

Ortega, 80, has been in office since 2007 after a previous presidential term in the 1980s. He is a former leader of the Sandinista National Liberation Front, which participated in the overthrow of the Somoza dictatorship in 1979.

He first came to power in July 1979 without an election following the revolution and led an authoritarian regime.

During the Iran-Contra affair of the 1980s, U.S. government officials sold arms to Iran as a way to fund a group called the Nicaraguan Contras, anti-communist rebels who fought a guerrilla war to overthrow Ortega’s left-wing Sandinista government from 1989 to 1990.

Nicaragua’s government had not publicly reacted to the Trump administration’s statements as of Wednesday morning.