- Nicaragua's National Assembly approved a constitutional reform on September 1 barring anyone labeled a "traitor to the homeland" from running for office, and stretching the Ortega-Murillo co-presidential term from six to seven years. A second vote, now set for January 18, 2027, is still required.
- Carolina Jiménez, president of the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA), argues Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum's "self-determination" defense of Nicaragua collapses once a government removes its citizens' ability to choose anyone at all.
- Mexico abstained from an August 19 OAS vote convening emergency talks on Nicaragua, which passed with Brazil as the lone "no."
- Jiménez points to Mexico's own 2022 intervention in Peru's politics as evidence the country doesn't apply its non-intervention principle evenly.
Nicaragua's ruling Assembly has now done on paper what critics long warned it would: strip an entire category of citizens of the right to ever appear on a ballot again. To Carolina Jiménez, who leads the rights group WOLA, that single fact undercuts the argument Sheinbaum has leaned on for weeks — that Nicaraguans are simply exercising their own self-determination.
