Outgoing President Daniel Ortega is expected to win a fourth consecutive term in Nicaragua following the polls organized on Sunday, November 7 for which he dismissed his main rivals, placed in prison, and while the authorities consider most of the acts of protest as offenses.
The Supreme Electoral Council announced Monday in the early hours that after counting about half of the ballots, Daniel Ortega had won some 75% of the vote.
This is a setback for the United States, which is trying to promote democracy in a region from which comes the flow of migrants, always more numerous, seeking to join the American territory.
President Joe Biden has denounced a sham election.
Polling stations closed at 6 p.m. (midnight GMT).
If queues were seen at the start of the day in some polling stations in the capital Managua, there was hardly any crowd afterwards - the illustration of an expected participation at an unprecedented low.
Daniel Ortega, 75, is already the continent's longest-serving ruler, with nearly 15 consecutive years in power.
The former Sandinista guerrilla, who overthrew the Somoza family in 1979, was president from 1985 to 1990 and has been president again since January 2007, while his wife Rosario Murillo, 70, has served as vice-president since 2017.
Only five candidates, from friendly parties, were registered against Daniel Ortega.
In total, 4.5 million voters were called to vote.
"Betrayal to the Fatherland"
During an event broadcast on public television, Daniel Ortega described the presidential election as a victory against terrorism, a result achieved thanks to "the vast majority of Nicaraguans".
He then attacked his detractors, accusing his rivals and their foreign supporters of having wanted to prevent the poll from being held.
Since last May, on the basis of a law at the end of 2020, the Ortega government has arrested around 40 opposition figures accused of "treason to the motherland", including seven presidential candidates.
Journalists, businessmen and even some former allies of the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) have also been arrested.
Joe Biden said in a statement Sunday night that the "orchestrated" election was "neither free nor fair, and certainly not democratic."
The US president called on Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo to take immediate action to restore democracy.
The crackdown in Nicaragua took a new turn in 2018, becoming particularly bloody to quench broadly peaceful protests - a movement initially intended to protest the cost of living, before turning into an anti-government protest.
More than 300 people have been killed and thousands more injured.
Access to the territory was forbidden to foreign journalists for the presidential election and the government refused the presence of observers.
With AFP
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