The president of Nicaragua, Daniel Ortega, was seeking a fourth term in an election Sunday against several little-known candidates, while candidates with real options remained in prison.
More than 13,000 voting points were opened Sunday morning, hours after the opposition denounced more arrests of its leaders and activists in different parts of the country. Ortega denounced, for his part, the alleged interference of the United States.
The opposition called on Nicaraguans to stay home in protest at an electoral process widely criticized and considered unreliable by foreign powers.
Sunday’s elections will determine who will hold the presidency for the next five years, in addition to 90 of the 92 seats in the national congress and the Nicaraguan representation in the Central American Parliament.
Ortega’s Sandinista Front and its allies control the congress and all government institutions. Ortega served a first term as president between 1985 and 1990, before returning to power in 2007. He recently declared his wife and vice president, Rosario Murillo, “co-president”.
Police detained seven potential presidential hopefuls in June on charges that basically amounted to treason. On election day they were still in detention. Another two dozen opposition leaders were detained before the vote.
The other candidates on Sunday were little-known politicians from smaller parties considered to be akin to Ortega’s Sandinista Front.
The day before, the opposition Blue and White National Unit (UNAB) declared itself in a “state of alert” after reporting the capture of at least eight of its leaders “kidnapped – according to it – by the regime in illegal raids” during the afternoon and night. of Saturday.
The Civic Alliance in turn denounced cases of “harassment, surveillance, threats, intimidation, harassment, attacks, illegal and arbitrary arrests” of some of its leaders in various localities of the country.
The citizen observatories Urnas Abiertas and Monitoreo Azul y Blanco – linked to the opposition – reported 21 arrests in nine departments (provinces), of which – they said – five were released.
The National Police had neither confirmed nor denied the opposition complaints. After casting their vote, both the director of the police, Francisco Díaz, and the chief of the Army, General Julio Avilés, assured that the voting was taking place in “complete tranquility.”
Ortega and his wife voted at noon in the capital’s El Carmen district, where the supervised complex that houses their residence and the Sandinista party secretariat is located.
Later, Ortega gave a speech to Sandinista Youth activists, in which he attacked the United States and once again accused it of “fomenting and financing the massive protests of April 2018, which his government described as” a failed coup. “
He mentioned that the US government is jailing supporters of former President Donald Trump who stormed the Capitol on January 6. “They have as much right as we to open trials against terrorists,” he said.
He added that the United States “continues to conspire because it did not want these elections to take place … the vast majority of Nicaraguans are voting for peace and not for war or terrorism.”
The police and the army displaced 30,000 troops to guard the voting, to which more than 4.4 million Nicaraguans aged 16 and over have been summoned.
At midmorning, the voting passed calmly and with few people in the lines in front of the voting boards, enabled to receive an average of 350 voters throughout the day.
Meanwhile, in the capital of Costa Rica, hundreds of Nicaraguans exiled as a result of the social revolt of 2018 marched against Ortega and what they called the “electoral circus”, while demanding the “freedom of all political prisoners ”.
“We are protesting fraud and demanding justice for those killed,” said young influencer Kevin Monzón, who fled Nicaragua due to threats in late September.
With little doubt about the outcome of the presidential elections, interest was already focused on the international response as Ortega tries to tighten his grip on power.
The United States and the European Union have imposed sanctions against Ortega’s inner circle, but the government’s response was to detain more opponents.
A senior US State Department official, who spoke to the press on condition of anonymity, said the US government was willing to consider more targeted sanctions, but had tried to avoid measures that affected the Nicaraguan people more generally. .
The Organization of American States has condemned the incarceration of political prisoners in Nicaragua and their unwillingness to hold free and fair elections, but the Ortega government has only lashed out at foreign interference.
The regional body was scheduled to hold its annual general assembly in Guatemala this week. Guatemala, Honduras and Mexico are among the seven countries that abstained last month from voting on an OAS resolution condemning the repression in Nicaragua.
The polls in Nicaragua are scheduled to close around 6:00 p.m. on Sunday and the Supreme Electoral Council indicated that the first partial results would be published around midnight. The tentative count was expected on Monday.
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