In an official release issued Wednesday, the government of the Dominican Republic delivered a forceful rebuke of recent remarks by Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega, in which he claimed there would be no future elections held in his Central American country. The Dominican government characterized Ortega’s comments as a direct rejection of the core foundational values that underpin representative democratic systems across the hemisphere.\n\nThe Dominican statement makes clear that Ortega’s public comments openly dismiss the fundamental right of the Nicaraguan people to select their own governing leaders through regular, free, impartial, transparent and inclusive electoral processes. In grounding its position, the Dominican government invoked the first article of the Inter-American Democratic Charter, a regional agreement that enshrines the principle that all peoples of the Americas hold an inherent right to democracy, and that all member governments bear a binding obligation to both promote and protect this fundamental right.\n\nBeyond citing the regional charter, the Dominican Republic further emphasized that free and fair electoral processes, universal suffrage with secret balloting, protection for political pluralism, consistent respect for universal human rights, and adherence to the rule of law are all non-negotiable, inalienable components of legitimate representative democracy. No national government, the Dominican statement stressed, holds the legitimate authority to strip its citizens of the chance to express their sovereign will at regular intervals through the ballot box, nor can any government unilaterally eliminate elections as the recognized legal mechanism for the peaceful transfer of political power.\n\nThe government closed its statement by urging Nicaraguan state officials to abandon their current stance and move immediately to fully uphold and protect the political rights and fundamental freedoms guaranteed to all Nicaraguan people, including the critical right to participate in genuine, competitive democratic elections. It ended by reaffirming the Dominican Republic’s longstanding commitment to the collective defense of democracy, human rights and the rule of law across the Americas, framing these values as shared responsibilities that all regional nations have agreed to uphold.
Dominican Republic condemns Ortega’s claim that Nicaragua will hold no more elections
