MANAGUA – Nicaragua went to the polls for elections with a predictable outcome: the incumbent president Daniel Ortega he will undoubtedly get his fourth consecutive term as seven opposition candidates have been arrested in recent weeks. The president of the United States has spoken openly about “farce” Joe Biden, as well as Jose Miguel Vivanco, executive director of the Division for the Americas of Human Rights Watch, who stressed that the former guerrilla army “has control of all powers, including the National Assembly, the courts and the Supreme Electoral Council”.
Voting farce in Nicaragua, the Church goes into the trenches against the tyrant Ortega
by Daniele Mastrogiacomo
In the 13,459 seats scattered throughout the country, both the presidential elections and the choice of the 92 members of Congress were voted on. The polling stations closed at 18 local time, after 11 hours. About 30,000 soldiers and policemen were called to ensure security. There have been no significant incidents and on the political level there is no great expectation for the results: Ortega will be confirmed and will continue to govern Nicaragua, together with his wife Rosario Murillo, who has the role of “co-chairman”. The opposition has shown a very high rate of abstention, a claim promptly denied by the Sandinista National Liberation Front, the revolutionary movement that has become a party of power that stifles all forms of dissent.
“What Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega and his wife, Vice President Rosario Murillo, orchestrated today was an electoral pantomime that was neither free nor fair, and certainly undemocratic,” Biden said in a White House statement on the ” bogus elections in Nicaragua “.
On the same wavelength the president of Costa Rica, a country that hosts many Nicaraguan exiles. Carlos Alvarado announced via Twitter that he did not want to recognize the elections held yesterday in Nicaragua: “Due to the lack of democratic conditions and guarantees we do not recognize the Nicaraguan elections. We ask the government to free and restore the rights of political prisoners, as well as the international community to promote dialogue to recover democracy in Nicaragua “.
Instead, he spoke of “success” Dmitry Novikov, representative of the State Duma of the Russian Federation, one of the “observers” who came from Moscow to follow the election day. In a press conference, he said he was able to observe how “the electoral authorities and the people who actively participated in the vote did everything necessary to ensure that the elections took place in an appropriate, transparent and free environment”.
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