MANAGUA (Dispatches) --
Nicaragua’s incumbent President Daniel Ortega has overwhelmingly won the presidential election, clinching a fourth consecutive term amid threats of sanctions from the United States.
Preliminary results announced by the country’s Supreme Electoral Council showed Ortega’s Sandinista alliance winning about 76% of votes with almost all the ballots counted.
Ortega, the Americas’ longest-serving leader with 15 consecutive years in power, hailed the vote as a victory over terrorism delivered by the “immense majority of Nicaraguans”.
The veteran politician’s salvo was aimed at the U.S. and its western allies, which have been accused of interference in the country’s internal affairs.
U.S. President Joe Biden has labeled the general elections in Nicaragua as a “pantomime” vote, claiming it was “neither free nor fair, and most certainly not democratic.”
The re-election of Ortega, 75, who helped depose the right-wing Somoza family dictatorship in the late 1970s, is likely to escalate tensions between Washington and Managua.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Monday said Washington would work with allies and was ready to use a range of tools, including possible sanctions, against those involved in supporting, what he said, the “undemocratic acts” of the Nicaragua government. The European Union also rejected the results.
The United States has long been accused of interfering in the internal affairs of Nicaragua, a Latin American country it occupied from 1912 to 1933 as part of the Banana Wars.
Washington and the EU have already imposed sanctions against Ortega’s family members and allies amid a series of U.S.-provoked anti-government protests in the lead-up to recent election.
Last week, the U.S. Congress approved a legislation to step up diplomatic pressure on the government of President Ortega, making its intentions amply clear.
Ortega on Monday evening hit back at the U.S. and Europe, labeling them “Yankee imperialists”.
“They wanted to be at the head of the Supreme Electoral Council... counting the votes of the Nicaraguans,” Ortega said in a speech at Revolution Square in Managua. “That won’t happen again in Nicaragua. Never again, never again,” he stressed.