MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Ortega reelected in Nicaragua with 75.92% of the votes

Nicaragua's Supreme Electoral Council (CSE) Monday certified Ortega's win with over 65% of the votes

After 97.74% of the votes had been counted, Nicaragua's President Daniel Ortega secured his reelection for another five years in office with a 75.92% support amid notorious abstention and world criticism. Turnout was 65.23%.

Nicaragua's Supreme Electoral Council (CSE) Monday certified Ortega's win on behalf of the Sandinista Front Alliance (FSLN), which marks his fourth successive term and the second with his wife Rosario Murillo as Vice President.

With 97.74 per cent of the boards counted (2,704,705 votes), the binomial led by the current president Daniel Ortega and the vice president, Rosario Murillo obtained 75.92 per cent of the votes, followed by the Liberal Constitutionalist Party (PLC) with 382,739 votes (14.15%) and the Nicaraguan Christian Way with 89,311 votes (3.30%).

In the months leading up to the elections, most contenders who would have posed a challenge to Ortega's victory had been either arrested or went into exile out of precaution.

Hence, various former Latin American presidents have called for the deepening of Nicaragua's isolation and labelled Ortega's regime “a dictatorship” as per the Organization of American States (OAS) Democratic Charter.

In a statement released in Washington DC signed by the secretary-general of the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (IDEA group), the former leaders called for the suspension of Nicaragua from the OAS because the electoral process had been marred “by the violation of citizens' rights to freely and democratically elect their authorities,” which “is serious both for the future of the Nicaraguan people and for the rest of Latin America because the itinerary through which a democracy becomes an autocracy was rigorously applied there.”

Former Brazilian President Fernando Henrique Cardoso (1995-2003), Costa Rican Laura Chinchilla (2010-2014), Chilean Ricardo Lagos (2000-2006) and Colombian Juan Manuel Santos (2010-2018) denounced that “the conditions under the which [Nicaraguans] were called to the polls determine the illegitimacy of these elections.”

Independent sources claim turnout was only 15% despite the official figures.

“The result was as expected: the illegitimate reelection of Daniel Ortega for a fourth consecutive term and his intention to perpetuate himself indefinitely in power,” the document went on as it called foreign ministers in the region to bring this issue forward to the next OAS General Assembly,“ where ”all the pertinent measures established in the inter-American system“ should be adopted.

The former leaders also recommended suspending all programs or negotiations within the international and regional financial institutions, trying not to alter the humanitarian assistance programs in favor of the Nicaraguan population.

”The four former presidents who signed this declaration together with the Secretary-General of International IDEA do so under the same conviction that has guided us before speaking out in defense of democracy in our region. Today we are summoned by the serious situation in Nicaragua,“ they pointed out.

The international community has strongly rejected the electoral process. The European Union expressed that it ”lacks legitimacy“, while US President Joseph Biden has pointed out Ortega and Murillo ”orchestrated a pantomime of elections that were neither free nor fair.”