Nicaraguans went into an election on Sunday marked by long-time President Daniel Ortega’s ruthless campaign to increase their grip on power by jailing opponents, a vote critics dubbed a farce but the veteran politician hailed as a call for peace. described.
Voters queued up at some polling stations despite low turnout expected in the capital Managua, some proudly showing their ink-stained thumbs after casting their votes.
Ortega, a lifelong guerrilla who helped topple a right-wing family dictatorship in the late 1970s, accompanied his wife, Vice President Rosario Murillo, to elevate his status as America’s longest-serving leader. It is almost certain to get a fourth straight term.
Sitting next to his wife, Ortega spoke to a group of youth in an address broadcast on state television on Sunday afternoon, which was met with repeated applause.
“They didn’t want us to be able to hold these elections,” he said, referring to his domestic opponents and his foreign supporters.
“They are demons who don’t want peace for our people and instead opt for slander and disqualification. Why? So that Nicaragua gets caught up in violent skirmishes.”
Voting is scheduled to end at 6:00 PM local time (0000 GMT).
In neighboring Costa Rica, where thousands of Nicaraguan deportees have fled in recent years, some 2,000 anti-Ortega protesters marched along the main city of San Jose.
Slogans of “Long live a free Nicaragua” were played and festive marimba music was played from the speakers.
“I didn’t want to leave my country,” said protester Marcela Guevara, 48, an activist for Nicaragua’s Blue and White National Unity Party, a major opposition coalition that has called for a vote boycott.
“But you can’t talk, you can’t move, you can’t join groups of your choice,” she said, breaking the rule of law.
Ortega first served as president in the 1980s before losing in 1990, and he returned to the top post again in 2007.
Since May, Ortega’s police have imprisoned nearly 40 prominent opposition figures, including seven presidential candidates, as well as prominent business leaders, journalists and even some of his former rebel aides.
Ortega’s only opposition to the ballot comes from five little-known candidates from smaller allies. About 4.5 million Nicaraguans are eligible to vote.
‘widely discredited’
Also on Sunday are 92 seats in the unicameral Congress, which is also tightly controlled by Ortega’s allies.
The US head of Human Rights Watch, Jose Miguel Vivanco, dismissed the election as a “spectacle” in a post on Twitter.
He predicted that Ortega would extend his rule “on the strength of repression, censorship and fear”, calling on other countries to confront his government.
“It is necessary to double the international pressure to demand the release of political prisoners and the re-establishment of democracy in Nicaragua,” he said.
Ortega’s current term took a particularly oppressive turn in 2018, when he initially dismissed largely peaceful protests by those upset over spending cuts, which killed more than 300 people and injured thousands more.
Last year, the ruling party brought in a new law outlawing dissent, and in recent months foreign journalists have been barred from entering.
One Reuters reporter was turned back by border agents last Friday, while the other, a Nicaraguan national, was turned back in September.
International observers were allowed in the country only from allies, including some Latin American left-wing movements, but not critics such as the European Union or the Organization of American States (OAS).
In a Sunday post on social media, the Ortega-affiliated electoral authority celebrated more than 200 “election peers” from 27 countries and 600 journalists of all nationalities covering the vote, but without providing details.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken last month denounced the “sham election”, accusing Ortega, 75, and Murillo, 70, of seeking “totalitarian ancestry”.
Last week, US officials said new sanctions were being considered against the power couple’s government, a sentiment echoed by EU leaders, in addition to a future review of Nicaragua’s status in the CAFTA regional trade agreement.
Ortega was a Cold War-era anti-American and Marxist rebel who toppled the Somoza dictatorship in 1979, but has since turned against many who helped him most during the conflict.
While most analysts agree that Ortega is likely to prevail in the near term, as have been done in recent years by fellow left-wing strongmen in Cuba and Venezuela, they also point to prolonged unrest. New waves of Nicaraguan escapees may start.
Many have moved south of Costa Rica, or sought to reach the US border, driven by an economic slowdown before the coronavirus pandemic.
GDP shrank about 9% from 2018 to 2020, compared to a strong average growth of about 4% since 2000.
Disclaimer: This post has been self-published from the agency feed without modification and has not been reviewed by an editor
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