President Joe Biden slammed on Sunday Nicaraguan presidential elections as a sham, blaming incumbent Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega and his wife, Vice President Rosario Murillo, for orchestrating ‘a pantomime election that was neither free nor fair, and most certainly not democratic’.
Biden said in a White House statement that the long unpopular Ortega and Murillo family now rule Nicaragua as autocrats without a democratic mandate, stressing that Ortega’s regime rigged the outcome well before the elections.
He hit out at the Nicaraguan leader for imprisoning in recent months 39 opposition figures – including seven would-be presidential challengers – blocking political parties, and for quashing and bulling the independent media, the private sector and civil society.
In a climate of fear under the watchful eye of 30,000 police and soldiers in the impoverished Central American country, as rights groups claim, Nicaraguans went to the polls on Sunday to choose new president.
After counting nearly 50% of the ballots, the Chairperson of the Supreme Electoral Council, Brenda Rocha, told a press conference on Monday that Ortega – expected to take a fourth consecutive five-year term – is winning again the presidential elections, with 74.99% of voters casting their votes for the alliance led by the ruling Sandinista National Liberation Front.
According the Supreme Electoral Council, the turnout at the elections totaled 65.34% and the final election results are expected to be announced by November 26.
Calling on Ortega to take immediate steps to restore democracy and to release those unjustly imprisoned, Biden stressed that the US will support people of Nicaragua by using all diplomatic and economic tools and will hold accountable the Ortega-Murillo government and others that facilitate its abuses.
Amid the wave of arrests in the lead up to Sunday’s vote, Washington, along with the European Union, has already imposed sanctions against Ortega family members and allies.
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