The disputed elections in Nicaragua ended in which it is assumed that President Daniel Ortega will win the fourth consecutive term, after 14 years in power, after seven opposition candidates have been arrested. The 13,459 seats closed after opening eleven hours at 18 local time, under the surveillance of about 30,000 soldiers and policemen; the election day went by without major incidents, but the opposition showed a very high rate of abstention, a figure denied by the ruling party.
US President Joe Biden called it a farce. “What Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega and his wife, Vice President Rosario Murillo, orchestrated today was an election pantomime that was neither free nor fair, and certainly undemocratic,” Biden said in a White House statement on ” bogus elections in Nicaragua ».
The Urnas Abiertas observatory recorded a series of irregularities during today’s elections in Nicaragua, while the opposition coalition, Blue and White National Unity, reported a high rate of abstention. In the first hours of the voting, according to Urnas Abiertas, 200 acts of violence in the polling stations were reported, such as indimidation and the impediment to opposition members from presiding over the polling stations, but also the obligation for state employees to send candidates to superiors proof that they had voted for them. There were also reports of arrests of journalists who were later released. Pro-government electoral propaganda was constant in election centers, and voters were forced to vote even using cars and ambulances to transport them to polling stations, thus nullifying the “election strike” to which Nicaraguans were invited by the opposition after the arrest of the seven candidates, Urnas Abiertas again denounces.
The Costa Rican government has already stated that it does not recognize the elections of neighboring Nicaragua. “In the absence of the conditions and guarantees required in a democracy to accredit elections as transparent, credible, independent, free, fair and inclusive, Costa Rica does not recognize the electoral process in Nicaragua,” reads a statement from the Foreign Ministry. Re-launching the statement on his Twitter profile, Costa Rican president Carlos Alvarado called on the international community to “promote, among all parties in Nicaragua, spaces for dialogue and negotiation to restore democracy”.