Yesterday's (12/23/20) LA TIMES (page A4) includes an article that I suspect most people will pass over without reading.
They shouldn't:
"Nicaragua's Congress, controlled by the country's ruling party, has passed a law that would essentially ban opposition candidates from running in the 2021 presidential election."
But wait, there's more:
"The law gives the government of President Daniel Ortega the power to unilaterally declare citizens 'terrorists' or coup mongers, classify them as 'traitors to the homeland' and ban them from running as candidates [for any political office].... Ortega has already applied those terms to virtually the entire opposition....[T]he law approved Monday appears aimed at sweeping aside the last roadblock to the continuation of his already lengthy, [increasingly despotic] rule of Nicaragua...."
Ortega led the Sandinista rebellion that overthrew the brutal Somoza dictatorship in 1979 and ruled until 1990 when the opposition won in a free and fair democratic election. For the next 17 years Nicaragua was run democratically. During this period Ortega unsuccessfully ran twice for reelection. Then in 2007 he finally won the presidency again, and began to impose an increasingly harsh rule under the Sandinistas. "He then sidestepped term limits to get himself reelected [along with his wife as Vice-President] in 2016 and packed courts and government agencies [and the legislature]with allies."
For SEVENTEEN YEARS the country was governed democratically. Most citizens must have breathed easy, thinking they had forever escaped the threat of a Dictatorship.
They Were Wrong.
And these events in a small, far off Central American country should offer those of us who believe a single victory in a free and fair democratic election will inoculate us forever from the Virus of Tyrannical Dictatorship A CAUTIONARY TALE:
It Won't.
The Virus of Tyrannical Dictatorship - masked insidiously behind the seductive populist rhetoric of grievance - never completely dies.
It must be confronted and fought whenever and wherever it reappears to the bane of humanity. For truly, "Eternal Vigilance is the price of Liberty"