For those of you not following the minute-by-minute news from Nicaragua, after a quiet day of voting with few notable incidents, a second set of preliminary results from Sunday's elections were announced early this morning at 3:30am. With 14% of the vote reported, Ortega leads with 40.04%, but US-supported candidate Montealegre is still close behind with 33%. However, the Ethics and Transparency Commission has also issued its own quick count results based on 15% of the voting centers, giving Ortega 38% and Montealegre 29%, which would make Ortega the winner. Oddly enough, the official government body that is in charge of the results has not announced any further vote updates since those given at 3:30am.
The media are being very careful to remind the public that the preliminary numbers do not signify any true tendency in the vote, and that it is impossible to extrapolate a winner from this percentage. Nevertheless, fireworks from the neighboring barrios continue, and the Sandinista sympathizers have begun to celebrate all over the country. People have been calling in from all over the country to the local TV stations covering the elections expressing various opinions from vocal outrage to tearful fear to lingering doubt to quiet confidence in the Sandinista victory. [As a reminder, a president can be elected in Nicaragua with 40% of the vote, or 35% with a 5% margin of victory.]
It appears that Ortega may have pulled off an improbably victory, but there are a lot of votes yet to be counted, so take what you read from the international press with a grain of salt. It ain't over yet.
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2 comments:
Thanks for the "word on the ground". I found this report. Any comments on it: http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/1102/p01s02-woam.html
Let us know when the votes are finalized. It has been getting a decent amount of coverage up here.
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