Nicaragua’s Ortega wins landslide re-election

MANAGUA, (Reuters) – Nicaraguan President Daniel  Ortega, a socialist former guerrilla leader, cruised to a  landslide re-election victory after drawing broad support for  his anti-poverty programmes.
Ortega had 62.7 percent of the vote with returns in from 86  percent of polling stations in Sunday’s presidential election.  That was more than double the tally for his closest rival,  conservative radio personality Fabio Gadea.
Ortega’s supporters poured into the streets of Managua to  celebrate. “I’m happy … I think that people are convinced,  they voted for social programs, voted for the future, voted for  the poor,” said lawyer Silvia Calderon, 54.
Gadea refused to accept the results and accused Ortega of  voter fraud, but international election observers said voting  irregularities had not changed the final result.
The huge victory margin is a personal triumph for a man who  was for long a divisive figure — popular among his Sandinista  party’s supporters but distrusted by many and despised by  business leaders because of economic chaos during his first  term as president in the 1980s.
Ortega, 65, has moderated some of his socialist policies  since winning back the presidency five years ago and he has won  praise for letting private businesses work untroubled even as  he pushed anti-poverty policies.
Helped by financial support from Venezuelan President Hugo  Chavez, Ortega put money into health and education programs,  provided loans for small businesses and gave aid to farmers.
The policies won widespread support in largely agrarian  Nicaragua, which was a Cold War battleground in the 1980s when  Ortega’s left-wing Sandinista government fought U.S.-backed  Contra rebels.
“He’s a person who looks after the poor and we have noticed  the change,” said 43-year-old Xiomara Amador, a former army  nurse who lost her right leg in the 1980s conflict. “In 16  years of other governments, no-one helped the handicapped.”
Ortega was a leader of the Sandinista revolution that  toppled the Somoza family’s brutal dictatorship in 1979.
U.S. President Ronald Reagan saw the Sandinistas as a  threat and backed right-wing rebels known as Contras in a  decade-long civil war that killed around 30,000 people and  wrecked the economy.
Ortega was elected president in 1984 at the height of the  war but was voted out in 1990 and then spent 16 years in  opposition before bouncing back to power. He had gradually  toned down his radical rhetoric and styled himself as a devout  Christian by the time he won the last election in late 2006.