Daniel Ortega, the Americas’ longest-serving leader, has won re-election with 75 percent of the vote in polls.
Daniel Ortega's victory claim in Nicaragua’s presidential election has triggered a flood of condemnation from western and some Latin American states, which described the votes as “neither free nor fair”.
According to official partial results released on Monday, incumbent Ortega was easily securing a fourth consecutive term as Nicaragua's president.
US President Joe Biden was among the first to criticise the elections even before the partial results were out, slamming Nicaraguan presidential elections as a "sham".
"What Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega and his wife, Vice President Rosario Murillo, orchestrated today was a pantomime election that was neither free nor fair, and most certainly not democratic," Biden said in a White House statement on Sunday.
A statement by all 27 EU members accused Ortega of "systematic incarceration, harassment and intimidation" of opponents, journalists and activists.
The EU said the elections "complete the conversion of Nicaragua into an autocratic regime." Chile, Costa Rica, Spain and Britain called for detained opposition leaders to be freed.
"Elections were neither, free, nor fair, nor competitive," said Jose Manuel Albares, Spanish Foreign Minister.
Russia, on the other hand, backed Ortega, with Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov considering US calls for countries not to recognise the outcome as "unacceptable."
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‘Farce elections’
Election observers from the European Union and the Organization of American States were not allowed to scrutinise the vote and journalists had been barred from entering the country.
Rights activist Haydee Castillo, who was arrested in 2018 and now lives in the United States, called the election "a farce."
"He has not conceded anything despite the resolutions and declarations that the international community has made," Castillo said.
An opponent of the government from the eastern port of Bluefields said: "Most people I know decided not to vote, they say it's madness."
"What they're doing here is a joke," said Naomi, who declined to give her last name for fear of reprisals.
In the 1980s, Ortega served a single term as president before being voted out. He returned to the top job in 2007.
After initially delivering solid economic growth and attracting private investment, Ortega's government changed course in response to 2018 anti-government protests. More than 300 people were killed during the ensuing crackdown.
Thousands of Nicaraguans have since fled the country. Many of them gathered in neighboring Costa Rica on Sunday in a show of defiance against Ortega.
Prolonged discontent is expected to fuel more emigration to Costa Rica and the United States, where record numbers of Nicaraguans have been apprehended at the border this year.
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