Ortega leads in vote tally after jailing rivals

MANAGUA, Nicaragua (AP):

Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega was ahead by a wide margin on Monday, in his bid for a fourth consecutive term, in preliminary vote tallies for an election widely considered rigged.

Ortega had received 75 per cent, an apparently insurmountable total, with nearly half of polling places counting, said Brenda Rocha, president of the Supreme Electoral Council. Trailing far behind were a handful of little-known candidates.

The strongest potential opponents were in jail rather than on the ballot.

At the close of voting on Sunday, US President Joe Biden called the election a “pantomime”. The country’s opposition had urged voters to boycott the election and voting on Sunday appeared light, despite Rocha’s report of a turnout of 65 per cent.

The European Union (EU) foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, dismissed the results on Monday.

“Daniel Ortega has eliminated all credible electoral competition, depriving the Nicaraguan people of their right to freely elect their representatives,” Borrell said in a statement. “The integrity of the electoral process was crushed by the systematic incarceration, harassment and intimidation of presidential precandidates, opposition leaders, student and rural leaders, journalists, human-rights defenders and business representatives.”

He said the EU had so far avoided sanctions that would affect the Nicaraguan people, instead targeting those “responsible for antidemocratic developments in Nicaragua”. But he warned that additional measures could go beyond individual restrictions.

Ortega had railed against alleged interference by Washington and other “powers” in Sunday’s elections to determine who holds the presidency for the next five years, as well as 90 of the 92 seats in the congress and Nicaragua’s representation in the Central American Parliament.

The ruling Sandinista Front and its allies control the congress and all government institutions. Ortega, who turns 76 on Thursday, first served as president from 1985 to 1990 while battling US-backed rebels. He returned to power in 2007. He recently declared his wife, Vice-President Rosario Murillo, his “co-president”.

Voting closed on Sunday evening without reported incidents.

In June, police arrested seven potential presidential challengers to Ortega on charges that essentially amount to treason. Some two dozen other opposition leaders were also swept up ahead of the elections.

The remaining contenders on Sunday’s ballot were little-known politicians from minor parties seen as friendly to Ortega’s Sandinista Front.

On Sunday, Mayela Rodríguez found her local voting centre at a school in Managua virtually empty. “In past years it was really full,” she said. “Before, you had to (wait) in a big line to come here and now, empty.”

Around midday, Ortega spoke live on television after voting – he held up his inked finger.

He blasted the United States for interference in Nicaragua, noted allegations of fraud in the last US presidential election, reminded that those who stormed the US Capitol were called terrorists and remain jailed. He repeated his claim that the US government supported huge protests in Nicaragua in April 2018, which he has called an attempted coup.

“They have as much right as we do to open trials against terrorists,” Ortega said.

In a statement released around the close of voting, Biden called Nicaragua’s election process “rigged” and said the US would use the tools at its disposal to hold the Nicaraguan government accountable.