Ortega wins Nicaragua's presidential elections: preliminary results

Nicaraguan president, who has been in power since 2007, appears to secure another term

By Laura Gamba

BOGOTA, Colombia (AA) - Nicaragua's Supreme Electoral Council announced on Monday the preliminary results of Sunday's presidential elections, in which President Daniel Ortega is expected to declare victory alongside his wife, Vice President Rosario Murillo.

Ortega, who has been in power since 2007, had received 75% of votes with about half of the ballots counted, results that the international community has denounced as fraudulent.

The Costa Rican president said he does not recognize the result of Sunday’s presidential elections in Nicaragua.

“Due to their lack of democratic conditions and guarantees, we do not recognize the elections in Nicaragua,” President Carlos Alvarado posted on Twitter late on Sunday. “We call on the government to release and restore the rights of political prisoners, as well as the global community with Europe and Africa to promote dialogue to restore democracy in Nicaragua.”

Nearly 40 of Ortega's opponents have been arrested by government security forces months before the country's presidential election. Ortega called them "criminals" who want to "overthrow the government."

"That is what we are pursuing, that is what is being investigated and that is what will be punished in due course," Ortega said, while accusing his rivals of being "agents of the Yankee empire."

Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Monday expressed sharp disapproval of the elections in which, he said, there had been repression and manipulation.

“Yesterday’s undemocratic election denied the Nicaraguan people a real vote. The Ortega-Murillo government betrayed its commitments under the Inter-American Democratic Charter. The U.S. & international community will continue supporting the Nicaraguan people’s right to democracy," said Blinken on Twitter.

The secretary’s remarks follows President Joe Biden's affirmation that the elections were a "pantomime".

"What Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega and his wife, Vice President Rosario Murillo, orchestrated today was a pantomime election that was neither free nor fair, and most certainly not democratic," Biden said in a statement.

"Long unpopular and now without a democratic mandate, the Ortega and Murillo family now rule Nicaragua as autocrats," Biden said.

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