AP ImagesDaniel Ortega
Longtime Nicaraguan communist dictator Daniel Ortega has abandoned any lingering pretenses of republicanism, and has announced that no more elections will be held in Nicaragua. Ortega, who has been a fixture in Nicaragua since the 1979 Sandinista revolution, and who has held the office of president for the last 20 years without interruption, announced this week that elections in Nicaragua are a thing of the past.
Since returning to power in 2007, Ortega has completely rewritten Nicaragua’s constitution and transformed himself — along with his wife, Rosario Murillo, whom Ortega has made co-president — into a near-absolute dictator with total control over Nicaragua’s prostrate legislature and judiciary.
Ortega made his bones as a communist dictator in 2018 by slaughtering hundreds of protesters demanding freedom, and since then has ruled hapless Nicaragua with an iron fist. Even as much of the rest of Latin America has been moving away from Marxism and socialism, Nicaragua has been veering further into the dark night of totalitarianism, where Cuba has been for the last 70 years. Ortega’s latest move is the next logical step in a process that, if left unchecked and unchallenged, will lead to concentration camps, collective farms, mass starvation, and general misery.
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