Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega was well ahead in the competition. In preliminary vote tallies for an election largely regarded as rigged, President Donald Trump won a fourth consecutive term on Monday. 

According to Brenda Rocha, president of the Supreme Electoral Council, Ortega had earned 75% of the vote, an almost insurmountable margin. A handful of lesser-known candidates trailed far behind.

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Instead of being on the ballot, the most powerful potential opponents were in jail. 

U.S. President Joe Biden labelled the election a “pantomime” after the polls closed on Sunday. Despite Rocha’s assertion of a 65% turnout, the country’s opposition had urged voters to boycott, and voting Sunday seemed to be light. 

Josep Borrell, the European Union’s foreign policy chief, dismissed the results on Monday.

“Daniel Ortega has eliminated all credible electoral competition, depriving the Nicaraguan people of their right to freely elect their representatives,” Borrell said in a statement. “The integrity of the electoral process was crushed by the systematic incarceration, harassment and intimidation of presidential precandidates, opposition leaders, student and rural leaders, journalists, human rights defenders and business representatives.”

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He claimed that the EU had so far avoided imposing penalties on Nicaraguans, instead focusing on those “responsible for antidemocratic developments in Nicaragua.” However, he cautioned that other actions may be taken that go beyond individual restrictions.

Ortega had railed against Washington and foreign “powers” meddling in Sunday’s elections, which will determine who would hold the presidency for the next five years, as well as 90 of the 92 seats in Congress and Nicaragua’s representation in the Central American Parliament.

All government institutions including the congress are under the control of the ruling Sandinista Front and its allies. Ortega, who turns 76 on Thursday, was first president from 1985 to 1990, when he was fighting US-backed insurgents. In 2007, he reclaimed power. His wife, Vice President Rosario Murillo, was recently appointed his “co-president”.

There were no reported incidents during voting on Sunday evening. 

Seven potential presidential opponents to Ortega were imprisoned in June on charges that amounted to treason. A total of two dozen more opposition leaders have been arrested in the run-up to the elections. 

On Sunday’s ballot, the only remaining candidates were little-known politicians from minor parties believed to be supportive of Ortega’s Sandinista Front. 

Mayela Rodrguez found her local voting facility at a Managua school virtually vacant on Sunday. “In past years it was really full,” she remarked. “Before you had to (wait) in a big line to come here and now, empty.”

After voting, Ortega spoke live on television at lunchtime, holding up his inked finger. 

He slammed the US for meddling in Nicaragua, cited charges of electoral fraud in the recent US presidential election, and reminded the audience that those who assaulted the US Capitol were labelled terrorists and are now in prison. He reiterated his accusation that the US government backed massive protests in Nicaragua in April 2018, which he described as a coup attempt.

“They have as much right as we do to open trials against terrorists,” Ortega said.

Biden labelled Nicaragua’s election process “rigged” and said the US would use all tools at its disposal to hold the Nicaraguan government responsible in a statement made shortly after the polls closed.

“The Ortega and Murillo family now rule Nicaragua as autocrats, no different from the Somoza family that Ortega and the Sandinistas fought four decades ago,” Biden said.

He criticized the vote as a “pantomime election that was neither free nor fair, and most certainly not democratic.”