Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega had a strong lead over four other candidates in an election that could return him to power 16 years after a US-backed rebellion helped force him from office, according to preliminary results released early yesterday.
With a little over 7 percent of polling stations counted, Ortega has 41 percent, to 33 percent for Harvard-educated Eduardo Montealegre of the Nicaraguan Liberal Alliance, a party that broke from the ruling Constitutionalist Liberal Party after former president Arnoldo Aleman was convicted of corruption.
Trailing behind were Sandinista dissident Edmundo Jarquin, ruling party candidate Jose Rizo and former Contra rebel Eden Pastora.
PHOTO: AFP
Ortega needs 35 percent of the vote and an advantage of 5 percentage points over his closest rival to avoid a runoff next month.
Sunday's election has become a tug-of-war issue between Venezuela and the US. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has openly favored his "brother" Ortega, while Washington remains wary of the balding 60-year-old, once an iconic figure of the Latin American left and ally of the Soviet Union.
The US Embassy issued a statement late on Sunday saying it was too soon to "make an overall judgment on the fairness and transparency of the process."
"We are receiving reports of some anomalies in the electoral process, including the late opening of [polling places], the slowness of the voting process and the premature closing of some" polling places, the statement read.
Before reading the early results, Roberto Rivas, president of the Supreme Electoral Council, blasted the US statement, saying: "We have promised the Nicaraguan people transparent elections, and that's what we've done. I think there were enough observers to witness that."
Ortega's supporters flooded the streets, setting off celebratory fireworks, waving the party's red-and-black flag and swaying to the candidate's campaign song, set to the tune of John Lennon's Give Peace a Chance.
Montealegre brushed aside Ortega's lead, saying: "This doesn't show anything."
Constitutionalist Liberal Party spokesman Leonel Teller warned that electoral authorities were "inciting something that could end in blood and violence."
Observers said voting overall was peaceful, although many polling stations opened late, leaving long lines of people waiting to cast their ballots. After the polls closed, groups of angry voters pounded on shuttered doors, screaming at officials inside to let them vote.
Polls have shown Ortega would have trouble winning a runoff. While he has a loyal base of support, many voters still have bitter memories of Sandinista rule, which left the country in an economic shambles and which saw 30,000 killed in a war against US-backed Contra rebels.
Ortega has repeatedly said he has changed.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
JOINT EFFORTS: The three countries have been strengthening an alliance and pressing efforts to bolster deterrence against Beijing’s assertiveness in the South China Sea The US, Japan and the Philippines on Friday staged joint naval drills to boost crisis readiness off a disputed South China Sea shoal as a Chinese military ship kept watch from a distance. The Chinese frigate attempted to get closer to the waters, where the warships and aircraft from the three allied countries were undertaking maneuvers off the Scarborough Shoal — also known as Huangyan Island (黃岩島) and claimed by Taiwan and China — in an unsettling moment but it was warned by a Philippine frigate by radio and kept away. “There was a time when they attempted to maneuver
RSS