Nicaragua’s dictatorship should be Marco Rubio’s next problem

It’s rare these days to hear a dictator openly admit he won’t bother holding elections. Even the world’s most brutal authoritarian regimes usually resort to sham votes and other tricks to cloak themselves in a veneer of legitimacy.

Not Nicaragua.

Daniel Ortega, the country’s authoritarian president since 2007, this month acknowledged that the vote scheduled for November 2027 simply won’t happen. “There won’t be any more elections,” the 80-year-old former leftist guerrilla declared during the annual commemoration of the 1979 Sandinista revolution, arguing that holding them would allow his opponents to “capture the government, to capture power.” Duh.