Nicaragua’s Ortega set to win election that U.S. blasts as ‘pantomime’

SAN JOSE, Nov. 7 (Reuters) – Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega was slated to win re-election Sunday after jailing top rivals and criminalizing most of the disagreements.

Costa Rica, the country’s southern neighbor, also turned down the election before preliminary results were announced.

The elections in Nicaragua closed at 6 p.m. (0000 GMT). In the capital Managua, queues of voters had formed at some polling stations that morning, but the queues then decreased significantly, which corresponds to the expectations of a historically low voter turnout.

Ortega, 75, a former revolutionary who helped overthrow the Somoza family’s right-wing dictatorship in the late 1970s, is America’s longest-serving leader with 15 consecutive years in power. He has been ruling since the beginning of 2017 together with his wife, Vice President Rosario Murillo, 70, the official spokeswoman for the government.

Sitting next to her on Sunday afternoon at an event broadcast on state television was an open-necked Ortega who welcomed the election as a victory over terrorism for the “immense majority of Nicaraguans” before engaging with his critics.

“They didn’t want us to be able to hold these elections,” he said, referring to his domestic opponents and their foreign supporters. “They are demons who do not want peace for our people and instead rely on slander and disqualification. Why? So that Nicaragua is embroiled in violence.”

But US President Joe Biden attacked the Nicaraguan leader, saying in a statement released before the results were announced that Ortega and Murillo were “no different from the Somoza family” and had “staged a pantomime election that neither did.” free was still fair, and quite sure ”. not democratic. “

Ortega was president in the 1980s before losing in an uproar in 1990. In 2007 he returned to the top position.

Since May, Ortega’s police have detained dozens of opposition leaders, including seven presidential candidates, business leaders, journalists and even some of his old rebel allies.

Last week, US officials said new sanctions were being considered against the couple’s government, an opinion echoed by European Union leaders, in addition to a future review of Nicaragua’s status in the CAFTA regional trade pact.

Biden called on Ortega to take immediate steps to restore democracy and release prisoners from the opposition.

“Until then, the United States, in close coordination with other members of the international community, will use all diplomatic and economic tools at our disposal to assist the people of Nicaragua and to hold the Ortega-Murillo government and those who facilitate its abuses accountable to pull. ” he said.

Costa Rica’s government was the first from Central America to step in, rejecting the process as undemocratic and calling on Ortega’s government to “release immediately” all political prisoners and restore their civil rights in a statement released on Sunday evening.

MIGRATION RISK

Civilians and military personnel line up to enter a school used as a polling station to vote during the country’s presidential election in Managua, Nicaragua, Nov. 7, 2021. REUTERS / Stringer

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Ortega’s only opposition on the ballot comes from five little-known candidates from small parties allied with the Sandinista Strongman Movement. About 4.5 million Nicaraguans were eligible to vote.

Also in the vote on Sunday 92 seats in the unicameral congress were won, which are also firmly controlled by Ortega’s allies.

In Costa Rica, to which tens of thousands of Nicaraguan exiles have fled in recent years, about 2,000 anti-Ortega protesters marched along a main thoroughfare in downtown San Jose, chanting, “Long live a free Nicaragua,” while festive marimba music streamed out Loudspeakers boomed.

“We have a dictatorship like Cuba or Venezuela,” said Carmen Vivas, a Nicaraguan woman who lives in Costa Rica and who took part in the march. “We know that these elections are no future for Nicaragua,” she said.

Ongoing social and political unrest is driving the already growing numbers of Central American migrants south to Costa Rica and north to the United States.

Nicaraguans crossing the US border this year have already peaked at around 50,000, according to official figures.

Jose Miguel Vivanco, America’s head of Human Rights Watch, dismissed the election as a “farce” in posts on Twitter.

He predicted that Ortega would expand his rule “through repression, censorship and fear” and urged other countries to face his government.

“It is important to double international pressure to demand the release of political prisoners and restore democracy in Nicaragua,” he said.

Ortega’s government took a particularly repressive turn in 2018 when it put down largely peaceful protests by those who were initially upset about spending cuts, killing more than 300 people and wounding thousands more.

Last year the ruling party passed a law banning speaking, which Ortega’s judges consider harmful to the economy or “public order”, and international journalists have been banned from entry in recent months.

A Reuters reporter was turned away by border officials last Friday, while another, a Nicaraguan national, was turned away in September.

In a Sunday report on social media, the election authority, allied with Ortega, celebrated more than 200 “election attendants” from 27 countries as well as 600 journalists of all nationalities who reported on the vote without giving details.

International observers from the EU and the Organization of American States were not allowed to attend.

Reporting by Daina Beth Solomon; Additional coverage from Diego Ore and Alvaro Murillo; Letter from David Alire Garcia; Editing by Daniel Flynn, Chizu Nomiyama, Peter Cooney and Michael Perry

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/nicaraguas-ortega-seeks-re-election-with-opposition-candidates-jail-2021-11-07/