CSE ratifies re-election of Daniel Ortega as president of Nicaragua with 75.87% of the votes

The President of Nicaragua, Daniel Ortega, was re-elected with 75.87% of the votes in the general elections last Sunday, with 99.9% of the Vote Receiving Boards (JRV) scrutinized, as reported by the Supreme Electoral Council (CSE) on Wednesday.

The former Sandinista guerrilla, who turns 76 tomorrow and has been in power since 2007, was seeking his fifth presidential term of five years and a fourth consecutive, amid questions of his legitimacy for the arrest of seven presidential candidates from the opposition who were emerging as his main contenders and for the elimination of three political parties.

According to the CSE report, Ortega prevailed over the other five candidates considered “collaborators” of the Government by the excluded opponents and who together did not reach 25% of the votes.

Ortega, who will assume his new mandate on January 10, 2022, will be able to remain in office until January 2027 and serve 20 years in a row in power, an unprecedented case in the recent history of Nicaragua and Central America.

As expected, several countries do not recognize the results of the elections in Nicaragua

The candidate of the Constitutionalist Liberal Party, deputy Walter Espinoza, obtained 14.33% of the votes, and was placed in second place, with which he obtained a seat, by law, before the National Assembly.

The other four presidential candidates did not reach 4% of the vote: Guillermo Osorno, from the Nicaraguan Christian Way (CCN), achieved 3.26%; Marcelo Montiel, from the Nicaraguan Liberal Alliance (ALN), 3.11%; Gerson Gutiérrez Gasparín, from the Alliance for the Republic (APRE), 1.75%, and Mauricio Ouebe, from the Independent Liberal Party (PLI), 1.69%, according to official results.

CSE: 65.26% participation

The president of the CSE, Brenda Rocha, said in a press appearance that, of the more than 4.4 million Nicaraguans called to vote, 65.26% of the population participated, which contrasts with independent calculations, such as that of the observatory Open Urns, which placed abstention at just over 80% or the CCN party, which set abstention at 75%.

Those elections, in which Rosario Murillo, Ortega’s wife, was also re-elected as Vice President, were marked, among others, by the The absence of seven candidates for the presidency of the opposition who were imprisoned prior to the voting on charges of “treason, among them the independent Cristiana Chamorro.

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.

The CSE also confirmed the superiority of votes obtained by the ruling Sandinista National Liberation Front (FLSN) in the elections of 90 deputies to the National Assembly and 20 to the Central American Parliament (Parlacen). (I)