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The Nicaragua Investment Conditionality Act, also known as NICA Act, is a bill that, as a response to the alleged election fraud committed by Nicaraguan president Daniel Ortega during the 2016 election, prevented Nicaragua from taking additional loans until they were willing to "[take] effective steps to hold free, fair and transparent elections."
In 2016, the bill was passed by the United States House of Representatives, but not the Senate and was reintroduced to the House of Representatives during a new session in 2017. The Nicaraguan Government opposed this bill, with Nicaraguan Vice President and First Lady Rosario Murillo calling it a “reactionary and interventionist" action that would “undermine the right of Nicaragua to continue developing the socialist model.”. [1] All ALBA member states are opposed to the bill. [2] An international group of notable trade unionists have also voiced their opposition to the bill by signing a solidarity statement in support of the Government of Nicaragua: [3] Rosa Pavanelli of Public Services International; Joe O'Flynn of SIPTU; Owen Tudor of Trades Union Congress; Tim Roache of Britain's General Union; Kevin Courtney of National Union of Teachers; Mick Cash of National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers; Dave Prentis of UNISON. Human Rights Watch supported the legislation, calling it “a powerful tool to press the Ortega-Murillo government to end its pattern of abuse against opponents”. [4]
On December 20, 2018, U.S. President Donald Trump signed the NICA Act into law after it was unanimously approved by Congress. This enactment came eight months after the beginning of the 2018–2020 Nicaraguan protests. [5]
José Daniel Ortega Saavedra is a Nicaraguan politician who has been President of Nicaragua since 2007. Previously he was leader of Nicaragua from 1979 to 1990, first as coordinator (1979–1985) of the Junta of National Reconstruction, and then as President of Nicaragua (1985–1990). During his first term, he implemented policies to achieve leftist reforms across Nicaragua. In later years, Ortega's left-wing radical politics cooled significantly, leading him to pursue pro-business policies and even rapprochement with the Catholic Church. However, in 2022, Ortega resumed repression of the Church, and has imprisoned prelate Rolando José Álvarez Lagos.
Nicaragua is a presidential republic, in which the President of Nicaragua is both head of state and head of government, and there is a multi-party system. Executive power is exercised by the government. Legislative power is vested in both the government and the National Assembly. The judiciary is independent of the executive and the legislature.
The Sandinista National Liberation Front is a left-wing political party in Nicaragua. Its members are called Sandinistas in both English and Spanish. The party is named after Augusto César Sandino, who led the Nicaraguan resistance against the United States occupation of Nicaragua in the 1930s.
The Sandinista Renovation Movement is a Nicaraguan political party founded on 21 May 1995. It defines itself as a democratic and progressive party, made of women and men, that promotes the construction of a Nicaragua with opportunities, progress, solidarity, democracy, and sovereignty.
Rosario María Murillo Zambrana is a Nicaraguan politician and poet who has held the position of Vice President of Nicaragua, the country's second highest office, since January 2017 and First Lady of Nicaragua since 2007 and from 1985 to 1990 as the wife of President Daniel Ortega. Murillo has served as the Nicaraguan government's lead spokesperson, government minister, head of the Sandinista Association of Cultural Workers, and Communications Coordinator of the Council on Communication and Citizenry. She was sworn in as vice president of Nicaragua on 10 January 2017. In August 2021, she was personally sanctioned by the European Union, over alleged human rights violations.
Friendly bilateral relations now exist between Nicaragua and the United States. However, in the 19th and 20th centuries, tensions were high and American intervention was frequent. In the 1980s, due to Red Scare paranoia and an attempt to put down socialism in the region, the U.S proceeded to wage an undeclared war against the left-wing Sandinista movement by funding the Contra groups until it was defeated in the election in 1990.
The Nicaraguan fourth ballot box or Nicaraguan cuarta urna is a referendum or plebiscite proposed by Nicaraguan president Daniel Ortega as part of a project to pressure for and effect a change to Nicaraguan constitutional law regarding term limits imposed on the presidency. This follows in the wake of similar efforts by fellow Central American president Manuel Zelaya to propose a fourth ballot box in Honduras.
The Democracy Is Strengthened by Casting Light on Spending in Elections Act, or DISCLOSE Act, is a federal campaign finance reform bill that has been introduced in the United States Congress since 2010. The bill would amend the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971 to provide for greater and faster public disclosure of campaign spending and to combat the use of so-called "dark money" in U.S. elections.
General elections were held in Nicaragua on 6 November 2011. The incumbent president Daniel Ortega, won a third term in this election, with a landslide victory.
Corruption is a serious and growing problem for doing business in Nicaragua.
The Constituent National Assembly was a constituent assembly elected in 2017 to draft a new constitution for Venezuela. Its members were elected in a special 2017 election that was condemned by over forty mostly Latin American and Western states. The Democratic Unity Roundtable—the opposition to the incumbent ruling party—also boycotted the election claiming that the Constituent Assembly was "a trick to keep [the incumbent ruling party] in power." Since the opposition did not participate in the election, the incumbent Great Patriotic Pole, dominated by the United Socialist Party of Venezuela, won almost all seats in the assembly by default.
The 2018 Nicaraguan protests began on 18 April 2018 following a move by the government of Daniel Ortega to reform social security. Following the deaths of protesters, demonstrations intensified and grew into a large anti-Ortega movement seeking his removal from office.
The 2018 Nicaraguan protests began on 18 April 2018 when demonstrators in several cities of Nicaragua began protests against the social security reforms decreed by President Daniel Ortega that increased taxes and decreased benefits. After five days of unrest in which nearly thirty people were killed, Ortega announced the cancellation of the reforms; however, the opposition has grown through the 2014–2018 Nicaraguan protests to denounce Ortega and demand his resignation, becoming one of the largest protests in his government's history and the deadliest civil conflict since the end of the Nicaraguan Revolution. On 29 September 2018, political demonstrations were declared illegal by President Ortega.
General elections were held in Nicaragua on 7 November 2021 to elect the President, the National Assembly and members of the Central American Parliament.
The following lists events in the year 2021 in Nicaragua.
Cristiana Chamorro Barrios is a Nicaraguan journalist, nonprofit executive and political candidate. Vice-president of La Prensa, she was an aspiring presidential candidate in the 2021 Nicaraguan general election until the Ortega government disqualified her from running and ordered her arrest in early June 2021.
Alba Luz Ramos Vanegas is a Nicaraguan lawyer and judge. A member of the Sandinista National Liberation Front since the 1970s, she began her career as a civil servant in the 1980s and joined the Supreme Court of Justice as a magistrate in 1988. She became the body’s president in 2002–2003, and resumed the position in 2010. She has held it continuously since then.
Hugo Torres Jiménez was a Nicaraguan Sandinista guerrilla and military leader who was a brigadier general in the Nicaraguan Armed Forces. During the Sandinista National Liberation Front effort to overthrow the Somoza family regime, Torres was the only guerrilla who participated in both the 1974 Christmas party raid that freed future President Daniel Ortega among other prisoners, and the 1978 raid on the National Palace, freeing another 60 political prisoners. In the late 1990s he became a critic of Ortega, leaving the FSLN to join the Sandinista Renovation Movement and later its successor the Democratic Renewal Union, serving as vice-president of both parties. In June 2021 he was part of a wave of arrests of opposition figures by the Ortega administration. He died the following February.
The First Lady of Nicaragua is the title attributed to the wife of the President of Nicaragua, or their chosen designee, such as a daughter or other relative. The current incumbent first lady is Rosario Murillo, wife of President Daniel Ortega, who controversially became Vice President of Nicaragua under Ortega in January 2017.
This is a timeline of the 2020 Nicaraguan protests. It covers events from February to December 2020.