Nicaragua vote: Ortega tightens grip on power in 'pantomime election'

Preliminary results from the Nicaraguan general election suggest that incumbent President Daniel Ortega has won by a landslide.

With about half of the ballots counted, Mr Ortega has secured around 75% of the vote. But as the BBC's Central America Correspondent Will Grant reports, the result hardly comes as a surprise.

As the Nicaraguan president, Daniel Ortega, stepped back from casting his ballot, his supporters lining the polling station broke into supposedly spontaneous applause.

Holding his thumb in the air to show off the voting ink, he and his wife, Vice-President Rosario Murillo, drank in the noise for the state television cameras before being whisked away in a silver Mercedes-Benz.

He might as well have declared himself the victor there and then.

This was an election in which the result was never in question. In fact, the outcome in Nicaragua was decided months before a vote was even cast or counted.

From the moment on 2 June when police appeared at the home of his main rival, Cristiana Chamorro, and placed her under house arrest for alleged money-laundering, it was clear that President Ortega would be re-elected for another five-year term.

In the following days and weeks, there was a slew of further detentions of presidential hopefuls - seven of them in total - including a former Nicaraguan ambassador to the US, Arturo Cruz Jr, and Cristiana Chamorro's cousin, Juan Sebastián Chamorro. Even her brother, Pedro Joaquín, a journalist in his 70s, was arrested for merely voicing interest in running during an interview.

Three hours after uttering those words, the police arrived at his door too.

The clampdown has shocked Latin America for its speed and ruthlessness. Most of the detained candidates and many other Ortega critics have been charged under a controversial treason law.

Addressing the nation after voting, Mr Ortega again likened the round-up of his opponents to the trials in the United States of those who stormed the Capitol on 6 January.

"They have as much right as we do to open trials against terrorists," he said, adding that the "immense majority of Nicaraguans voted for peace and not terrorism or war".

Unsurprisingly, the president's claims did not wash with the exiled Nicaraguans who turned out to protest in Costa Rica's capital, San José. Instead they urged their compatriots to boycott the election in an effort to further delegitimise the vote.

"This is a consummate fraud, and all Nicaraguans are aware of it," said Alexa Zamora of the National Blue-and-White Unity group, an opposition alliance.

"We're calling on the international community not to recognise this vote and on Nicaraguan citizens still inside the country to stay away from the voting stations," she yelled above the chanting and bullhorns.

Even before polls had closed, the White House issued the kind of statement the protesters were hoping for, calling the vote "a pantomime election that was neither free nor fair, and most certainly not democratic".

A vote, then, with no meaningful rivals, no independent election observers or foreign media. At a Costa Rican border crossing of Peñas Blancas, several international journalists, including from the BBC, were denied permission to enter the country to cover the vote.

But while we could not get in, thousands are desperate to leave. Droves of Nicaraguans have fled the Ortega government since the crackdown began, often crossing into Costa Rica via blind spots along the jungled border.

Lionel Hernández charges the migrants a handful of dollars to make the illegal journey across his land. A Nicaraguan, Mr Hernández said he intended to cross back into the country to cast his ballot but was resigned over the outcome.

"Every country in the world has corrupt elections, even the United States. And only God can remove a king," he shrugs.

For those who no longer want to live as subjects under the reign of Daniel Ortega and his courtiers, their options are limited. Hundreds of Nicaraguans are currently making their way through southern Mexico as part of a migrant caravan slowing heading north.

Among them is Carla - not her real name - who used to work for the Sandinista government. When she became disillusioned and tried to leave the party, she was intimidated by armed pro-Ortega radicals who turned up at her house.

"It's getting worse and worse," she said under a thatched roof of a temporary shelter.

"Murders are going up, there are paramilitary groups who kill people. You can hardly go out, you can't express yourself. If you do, you'll be killed. Everyone knows these groups are controlled by the government."

Daniel Ortega is perhaps the last Cold War warrior. As Washington's nemesis during the Reagan Administration, he was second only to the late Cuban leader, Fidel Castro.

Following Mr Ortega's return to power in 2007, he has thrown off all the vestiges of his leftist guerrilla past. Behind a façade of pseudo-evangelical language, particularly from Rosario Murillo, there is an iron ruthlessness to the couple's will to remain in power until the bitter end.

Their supporters will claim another five-year term is somehow the will of the majority of Nicaraguan people. In reality, President Ortega's rule is increasingly repressive, autocratic and dynastic - and this controversial vote only further consolidates his control over his fiefdom.