Nicaragua banned US-sponsored coup leaders from elections, sparking corporate media meltdown - The Grayzone
Published by thegrayzone.com
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Who is named
The characters and things this document talks about — 26 in alls. Each links to everything else the record knows about them.
People 10
Manuel Orozco Marco Rubio Carlos Giménez Juan Orlando Hernández Donald Trump Juan Sebastián Chamorro Maria Elvira Salazar Damon Wilson Felix Maradiaga Daniel Ortega
Organisations 12
Atlantic Council US state department House Committee Nicaraguan government NED BBC CB Global Data Institute for Strategic Studies and… The New York Times Bloomberg Somoza dictatorship Atlas Network
Places 4
Claims made
Every claim in this document. Firsthand = asserted on its own basis; secondhand = recounted from elsewhere, carrying no independent weight.
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In his national address on July 19, Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega stated that when the country’s next elections take place in 2027, none who promoted a violent anti-government insurrection in 2018 will be allowed to stand for office.
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The pledge was universally interpreted by Western media outlets as a total ban on voting, prompting hysterical interventions from the US State Dept and throughout South Florida.
Bloomberg South Florida The New York Times US state department
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July 19 is a key date in Nicaragua’s calendar – the anniversary of the victory of its Sandinista revolution in 1979 and the overthrow of the vicious US-backed Somoza dictatorship which terrorized Nicaraguans for 43 years prior.
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Every year, huge crowds gather in celebrations across the country, culminating in a nationally‑broadcast speech by President Daniel Ortega.
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In recent years, Ortega has used the moment to discuss the country’s successes in the year prior, and lay out the agenda for the following year, while lauding not just the Sandinista Revolution’s triumph in 1979 but also the country’s resistance to the 2018 coup attempt – and lamenting the death and destruction it caused before peace was restored.
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This July 19, while discussing that violence, Ortega proposed a blanket electoral ban on candidates who participated in fomenting the riots which plagued Nicaragua for months in a violent, US government-sponsored coup attempt which left hundreds dead.
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“There will be no elections like that again here – no more elections through which they can try cheating their way to government or cheat their way to taking power.
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Quoting the President’s statement completely out of context, The New York Times shrieked that Daniel Ortega planned to abolish elections completely, strengthening his “authoritarian grip” on the country.
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A headline in business journal Bloomberg blared: “Nicaragua’s Dictatorship Should Be Marco Rubio’s Next Problem.”
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Right on cue, Rubio issued a statement accusing the Nicaraguan government of “thwarting the basic tenets of our democratic hemisphere.”
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Felix Maradiaga claimed that Ortega buried Nicaraguan democracy a long time ago.
The Times went to Felix Maradiaga, leader of an opposition group which “operates in secret in Nicaragua,” who claimed that “Ortega buried Nicaraguan democracy a long time ago.”
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Unmentioned by the NY Times was that Maradiaga is aligned with the far‑right Atlas Network and was a key actor in the 2018 coup attempt, for which he received copious US funding.
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As Max Blumenthal revealed in The Grayzone in 2018, the Yale‑trained Maradiaga’s Institute for Strategic Studies and Public Policy (IEEPP) had received at least $260,000 from the US government’s National Endowment for Democracy since 2014.
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The BBC falsely asserted that Nicaragua’s next elections were “cancelled.”
The BBC, falsely asserting that Nicaragua’s next elections were now “cancelled,” rolled out another opposition activist, Juan Sebastián Chamorro, who labelled Nicaragua “the North Korea of Latin America.”
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Chamorro and his oligarchic family have historically been the biggest recipients of US funding directed at regime change in Nicaragua and almost certainly still are.
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During the 2018 coup, Juan Sebastián Chamorro promoted the strategy of erecting tranques, or roadblocks, where opposition hooligans kidnapped, brutalized, raped and even killed common Nicaraguan citizens in a failed bid to strangle the country’s economy and ultimately take over its cities.
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Reuters described Maradiaga as a “presidential hopeful,” while Chamorro is joint author of a new Atlantic Council report calling for Washington to back his “transition plan” for Nicaragua.
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The National Endowment for Democracy’s president, Damon Wilson, bragged to a House committee in February that his organization is funding media in Nicaragua with an eye to undermining its Sandinista government.
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The NED, a CIA cutout, currently spends over $2 million annually on Nicaraguan opposition groups — its highest funding level for any country in the region.
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Opinion polls consistently show that the government has significant popular support. For example, its approval levels ranged from 40‑60 % in Argentina’s CB Global Data polls over the course of 2026.
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Ortega’s call to bar coup participants from elections was met with cheers from the July 19 crowds.
Ortega’s call for elections that bar the golpistas (coup mongers) from taking part was therefore met with cheers from the July 19 crowds.
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Next‑door Honduras provides a lesson of US electoral interference. Not only did Trump threaten Hondurans with aid cuts if they failed to vote as he wanted in last December’s poll, he also freed the convicted, narco‑trafficking former president, Juan Orlando Hernández.
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Now, Marco Rubio is being pushed by Florida Republicans such as Representatives María Elvira Salazar and Carlos Giménez to ensure that “After Cuba, Nicaragua is next.”
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This week, one of Ortega’s most prominent critics, Manuel Orozco of the Inter‑American Dialogue, admitted to CNN that “Nobody is thinking about what it would mean for the United States to remove these people from power when there is no opposition, the public does not know who the leaders in exile are, and there is economic stability.”
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Rubio threatened: “The Trump Administration and the international community will not stand by as the Murillo‑Ortega dictatorship deepens repression at home and manufactures instability that threatens U.S. national security.”
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Nicaragua has already been included in a fresh round of US tariffs, and economic sanctions and attacks on its trade with the US will certainly continue.
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However, the political focus is likely to stay on electoral interference, now that Nicaragua’s National Assembly president has repeated earlier assurances that elections will indeed take place.
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This brings us back to Daniel Ortega’s declaration during the celebrations in Managua. His government has the sovereign right to fight foreign interference in its electoral process.
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The US exercises the same right itself: only days before Ortega’s speech, Trump railed against foreign interference in US elections, promising measures to protect their integrity.
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Syndication
Who is repeating whom. This is shown as structure, and it is the reason a chorus never moves a belief bar: forty tellings of one assertion are still one.
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