Managua: Nicaragua’s leftist President Daniel Ortega won a third straight term Monday, with his colorful wife Rosario Murillo as vice president, partial results showed, after an election the opposition branded a “farce”.
With two-thirds of ballots counted, the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN), led by the 70-year-old former Marxist rebel, had 72 per cent of the vote, the country’s Supreme Electoral Council said.
Ortega’s nearest competitor, the right-leaning Liberal Constitutionalist Party, had just 14 per cent. Full official results were expected later.
The council’s head Roberto Rivas earlier said turnout in Sunday’s presidential and legislative polls was 65 per cent, though the opposition gave a much lower estimate.
Rejection of results
“We don’t recognise the results of this farce,” Violeta Granera, head of one of the opposition parties, the Broad Front of Democracy, told reporters before the partial tally.
She said the opposition had calculated turnout at less than 30 per cent, and said that the vote lacked legitimacy.
Ortega has been accused of being behind judicial maneuvers to limit the power of the opposition.
Men armed with machetes and clubs set fire to one polling station in a rural area 300 kilometers east of Managua on Sunday.
Ortega has controversially proposed building a transoceanic canal through the area, to rival Panama’s.
But government and electoral officials described the elections as a formidable exercise in democracy, conducted in “calm”.
“It’s a vote for peace, for the security of the Nicaraguan people,” Ortega said after casting his ballot.
By his side, Murillo said the polling was “exemplary”.
Foreign observers were barred from monitoring the process. But some Latin American officials were invited to drop into polling stations to greet workers.
Ortega, a former Marxist rebel, has strong support from Nicaragua’s poor.
They account for more than a third of the population and have benefited from his social programs.
Ortega’s supporters poured into the streets to celebrate, honking their car horns and waving red and blue Nicaraguan flags.
“We expect him to keep fulfilling his promises, to keep giving us food and housing,” one supporter, Maria Auxiliadora Monte, told AFP.
“He is the best president we have had.”
Nicaragua’s powerful business interests have also been well-served by economic stability and security under Ortega.
But with billions of dollars in credit from troubled ally Venezuela drying up, and massive infrastructure projects - such as the proposed canal - failing to materialise, Nicaragua’s prospects are clouding over.
Fourth mandate
If the final results confirm his triumph, it would be the president’s fourth mandate.
Ortega has served two consecutive terms since 2007, and previously between 1985 and 1990, when his Sandinista rebels emerged victorious from a revolution that toppled the dictatorial Somoza dynasty.
The opposition now accuses Ortega and Murillo of launching a dynasty of their own.
The eccentric first lady already fills a prominent role as the government’s spokeswoman, and is seen as possibly taking over as president in the future.
With Ortega increasingly reluctant to make public appearances, his 65-year-old wife has stepped up - wearing trademark colorful dresses and ostentatious jewelry - as the administration’s daily face.
Murillo has also left her mark on the capital, ordering the erection of tall, metal “trees of life” that decorate the main boulevard in bright colors.
“The practice of ‘couples in power’ is not exclusive to Nicaragua,” Veronica Rueda Estrada, a Nicaragua expert and professor at Mexico’s Quintana Roo University, told AFP.
She called to mind Cristina Kirchner, who succeeded her husband Nestor Kirchner as president of Argentina, and Hillary Clinton in the United States.
Clinton is vying to become president with her husband and former president Bill Clinton by her side.
