Early voting results in Nicaragua showed President Daniel Ortega securing a fourth straight term in office by a landslide in what Washington dubbed a sham election due to the veteran leader's unstinting suppression of his opponents.
Nicaragua's Supreme Electoral Council said that with roughly half the ballots counted, a preliminary tally gave Mr Ortega about 75 per cent of votes in the presidential election, which had been widely criticised in advance by Western powers as Mr Ortega vigorously set about jailing rivals and criminalising dissent.
US President Joe Biden, in a statement issued before the tally was announced, said Mr Ortega and his wife, Vice President Rosario Murillo, had orchestrated a "pantomime election that was neither free nor fair."
A former Marxist guerilla who helped topple the right-wing Somoza family dictatorship in the late 1970s, Mr Ortega says he is defending Nicaragua against unscrupulous adversaries bent on ousting him with the aid of foreign powers.
President Ortega is seeking a fourth consecutive term in elections that have been rendered almost moot. Source: AP
Mr Ortega is the longest-serving leader in the Americas, and US officials are considering new sanctions against his government, and a review of Nicaragua's role in a key regional trade pact.
Mr Biden called on Mr Ortega to restore democracy and release detained opposition leaders. Until that happened, the United States would use all available "diplomatic and economic tools" to hold the Ortega administration to account, he said.
Just five little-known candidates of small parties allied to Mr Ortega's Sandinistas ran against him on the ballot.
"Most people I know decided not to vote, they say it's madness," said Naomi, an opponent of the government from the eastern port of Bluefields, who declined to give her last name for fear of reprisals.
"What they're doing here is a joke."
In the 1980s, Mr Ortega served a single term as president before being voted out. He returned to the top job in 2007.
On Sunday afternoon, Mr Ortega hailed the latest election as a victory delivered by the "immense majority of Nicaraguans", and lashed out at domestic opponents, calling them "demons."
The protestors are against what they believe to be 'fraud' and the electoral 'circus' orchestrated by the President of Nicaragua Daniel Ortega. Source: EFE
Thousands of Nicaraguans have fled from their homeland since a 2018 crackdown on anti-government protests in which more than 300 people were killed. Many of them gathered in neighbouring Costa Rica on Sunday in a show of defiance against Mr Ortega.
Prolonged discontent is expected to fuel more emigration to Costa Rica and the United States, where record numbers of Nicaraguans have been apprehended at the border this year.
International observers from the European Union and the Organisation of American States were not allowed to participate, and journalists have been barred from entering the country.
