MANAGUA, NICARGUA: Nicaragua's leftist President Daniel Ortega has won a third straight term, with his colorful wife Rosario Murillo as vice president, results showed Monday, but the opposition and the United States condemned the election.
With 99.8 percent of ballots counted, the 70-year-old former Marxist rebel had 72.5 percent of the vote, the country's Supreme Electoral Council said.
His nearest competitor, Maximino Rodriguez of the right-leaning Liberal Constitutionalist Party, had just 15 percent.
Ortega, who has ruled Nicaragua for 20 of the past 37 years, has been accused of using the courts to limit the power of the opposition.
His opponents branded the election a "farce" -- a criticism echoed by the United States, which said the "flawed" process had made free and fair polls impossible.
As Ortega's opponents had urged Nicaraguans to boycott Sunday's vote, all eyes were on turnout.
Electoral officials said 68.2 percent of voters cast ballots. The opposition gave a wildly different estimate: under 30 percent.
"We don't recognize the results of this farce," Violeta Granera, head of one of the opposition parties, the Broad Front of Democracy, told reporters before the tally.
Government and electoral officials described the vote as a great exercise in democracy, conducted in "calm" -- despite the torching of one rural polling station.
"It's a vote for peace, for the security of the Nicaraguan people," Ortega said after casting his ballot.
By his side, Murillo -- a poet and longtime government spokeswoman -- said the polling was "exemplary."
Ortega has strong support from Nicaragua's poor.
They account for more than a third of the population and have benefited from his social programs.
Ortega's supporters poured into the streets to celebrate, honking their car horns and waving white and blue Nicaraguan flags.
"We expect him to keep fulfilling his promises, to keep giving us food and housing," one supporter, Maria Auxiliadora Monte, told AFP.
"He is the best president we have had."
Nicaragua's powerful business interests have also been well-served by economic stability and security under Ortega and his party, the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN).
But with billions of dollars in credit from troubled ally Venezuela drying up, and massive infrastructure projects -- such as a proposed transoceanic canal to rival Panama's -- failing to materialize, Nicaragua's prospects are clouding over.
It will be Ortega's fourth term.