The president of Nicaragua was reelected with 74.99% of the votes in the general elections this Sunday.
The president of Nicaragua, Daniel Ortega, was re-elected with 74.99% of the votes in the general elections this Sunday, marked by the absence of opposition candidates, most of them imprisoned, and discrepancies over participation.
The former Sandinista guerrilla, who turns 76 on Thursday and has been in power since 2007, was seeking his fifth five-year and fourth consecutive presidential term, amid questions of his legitimacy for the arrest of seven opposition presidential candidates who were emerging as his main contenders and for the elimination of three political parties.
According to the first report of the Supreme Electoral Council, read at dawn this Monday after several hours of delay, Ortega obtained 74.99% of the votes with almost 50% of the polling stations counted, with which He will be able to remain in office until January 2027 and serve 20 consecutive years in power, an unprecedented case in the recent history of Nicaragua and Central America.
Official figures set participation in the day at 65.34%, which contrasts with independent calculations, which placed abstention at just over 80 percent.
The Sandinista leader, who returned to power in 2007 after coordinating a Governing Board from 1979 to 1985 and presiding over the country for the first time from 1985 to 1990, left with an advantage to be reelected together with his wife, Vice President Rosario Murillo, due to the arrest of the presidential candidates, among them the independent Cristiana Chamorro.
Cristiana Chamorro and the absent
Chamorro, daughter of former president Violeta Barrios de Chamorro (1990-1997), who defeated the Sandinistas and Ortega at the polls in 1990, was the opposition figure most likely to win the elections, according to polls.
They were also left out of the electoral race due to arrests and legal investigations promoted by the Ortega Executive, Arturo Cruz, a former Nicaraguan ambassador to the US who was arrested upon his return from a trip to Washington; Félix Maradiaga, Juan Sebastián Chamorro, the journalist Miguel Mora, the peasant leader Medardo Mairena and Noel Vidaurre.
Ortega contested for the Presidency five candidates considered “collaborators” of the Government by the excluded opponents.
The candidate of the Constitutionalist Liberal Party, deputy Walter Espinoza, obtained 14.4% of the votes, when 49.25% of the 13,459 Voting Receiving Boards (JRV) have been counted.
The other four presidential candidates did not reach 4% of the votes: Guillermo Osorno, from the Nicaraguan Christian Way (CCN), achieved 3.44%; Marcelo Montiel, from the Nicaraguan Liberal Alliance (ALN), 3.27%; Gerson Gutiérrez GasparÃn, from the Alliance for the Republic (APRE), 2.20%, and Mauricio Ouebe, from the Independent Liberal Party (PLI), 1.70%, according to provisional results.
The day was also marked by low attendance at the polls, which according to the independent multidisciplinary observatory Urnas Abiertas, was 18.5%, although the electoral authorities set it at 65.34%.
Before the president of the Supreme Electoral Council, Brenda Rocha, read the results, the Sandinistas took to the streets to celebrate Ortega’s re-election.
Costa Rica does not know process
After the closure of the polling stations, neighboring Costa Rica announced that it will not recognize the Nicaraguan electoral process due to the “absence of conditions and guarantees” required in a democracy to accredit elections as transparent, credible, independent, free, fair and inclusive.
The Costa Rican President, Carlos Alvarado, wrote on his social networks that due to the “lack of democratic conditions and guarantees, we do not recognize the elections in Nicaragua. We reiterate the call to the Nicaraguan Government to immediately release and restore the rights of political prisoners “.
“Likewise, we extend a petition to the international community to promote, among all the parties in Nicaragua, spaces for dialogue and negotiation to recover democracy for the benefit of its people,” the text cites.
Meanwhile, US President Joe Biden called the elections in Nicaragua a “pantomime” and threatened to use “all the diplomatic and economic tools” at his disposal to hold President Ortega accountable.
In a statement distributed by the White House, Biden said that “the Ortega-Murillo regime” orchestrated “a pantomime election that was neither free nor fair, and certainly not democratic.”
He also urged them to “immediately” take the necessary steps to “restore” democracy and called for the release “immediately and unconditionally” of opponents who were imprisoned before the elections, including presidential candidates.
Until that happens, Biden warned, Washington, in coordination with other members of the international community, “will use all the diplomatic and economic tools” at its disposal to help the people of Nicaragua and hold Ortega, Murillo and those who “facilitate. their abuses. “
More than 4.4 million Nicaraguans were entitled to vote on Sunday with the aim of electing the president and vice president of Nicaragua, 90 deputies before the National Assembly and 20 representatives before the Central American Parliament. (I)
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