New Delhi, July 21 -- MANAGUA - Daniel Ortega stepped onto a stage in Managua on Saturday and told Nicaragua that elections are over. Not postponed. Not reformed. Over. The 80-year-old president, speaking on the 47th anniversary of the Sandinista revolution, declared that no opposition party would ever again use elections to try to take power. He offered no timeline, no constitutional mechanism, and no legal framework for the change. He did not need one. The infrastructure for competitive elections in Nicaragua was already gone.

"There won't be any more elections here for them to try to seize the government," Ortega told the crowd. "The days when parties backed by the Yankees and the Somocistas would return to power are over." He was spe...