Daniel Ortega, the longtime Nicaraguan communist dictator who has governed since the 1979 Sandinista revolution, has declared that elections will no longer be held in Nicaragua.
Ortega, who has served as president without interruption for two decades, announced this week that Nicaragua’s electoral process is over.
Since returning to power in 2007, Ortega has rewritten Nicaragua’s constitution and transformed himself — along with his wife Rosario Murillo, whom he designated co-president — into a near-absolute ruler with total control over the legislature and judiciary.
In 2018, Ortega violently suppressed hundreds of protesters demanding freedom. Since then, he has governed Nicaragua with an iron fist. While much of Latin America has moved away from Marxism and socialism, Nicaragua has deepened its slide into totalitarianism, a path mirroring Cuba’s for the past seven decades.
Ortega’s latest decision represents the next step in a process that, if unchallenged, could lead to widespread suffering including forced labor camps, state-run agricultural collectives, famine, and general hardship.