Ortega takes lead in presidential vote

Former revolutionary Daniel Ortega took a big lead in this country’s presidential election late Sunday and was close to securing a first-round victory that would bring his Sandinista National Liberation Front back to power 16 years after Nicaraguans voted him out of office, election officials said.

Early returns reported by the Supreme Electoral Council showed Ortega leading Eduardo Montealegre, 41% to 33%, with 7% of precincts counted.

Election officials said the results were being delayed by a large turnout, estimated at 75%.

Officials said privately that Ortega appeared to be cruising to a first-round victory.

Ortega, a youthful icon of the Latin American left in the 1980s, led by double digits in the final preelection polls but needed to win at least 35% of the vote to avoid a December runoff.

One Nicaraguan TV station said a quick count of ballots showed that Ortega had won 40% of the vote.

“We have ample faith in God that the Nicaraguan people will win a first-round victory,” Ortega, now an avuncular 60-year-old, said as he cast his vote in this capital city.

He said Nicaragua’s neighbors had nothing to fear should the Sandinistas return to power.

Despite delays at polling places, international and Nicaraguan observers said the vote appeared to proceed normally.

Representatives of conservative parties charged that officials in Managua closed some polling places with voters waiting outside, in violation of electoral law. Conservative-leaning television stations broadcast scenes of angry voters outside shuttered precincts, but Sandinista media outlets suggested that the protests were staged.

Late Sunday, crowds of Sandinista supporters took to the streets of Managua to celebrate and set off fireworks.

Conservative activists said they hoped late returns from rural areas would deny Ortega a first-round victory.

An estimated 2.8 million people cast votes. Analysts said Ortega would have little chance of winning a runoff because his conservative and leftist opponents would probably unite against him.

U.S. officials and Republican congressmen have warned Nicaraguans that an Ortega victory would strain relations with the United States.

Oliver North and other luminaries of the American right have come to Managua to stump for conservative challengers Jose Rizo and Montealegre, arguing that a Sandinista triumph would give a toehold in the region to maverick Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, who is widely believed here to have funded the Ortega campaign.

In April, U.S. Ambassador Paul Trivelli met with Rizo and Montealegre in a bid to unite the anti-Ortega opposition. Trivelli has said that Ortega had “undemocratic” tendencies and would return Nicaragua to a state-run economy.

“The whole gamut of the relationship ... between the U.S. and Nicaragua would definitely be reexamined” in the event of an Ortega victory, Trivelli told the Financial Times in September.

Ortega and the Sandinistas led the revolution that overthrew dictator Anastasio Somoza in 1979. But discontent against their government grew during the 1980s, as the country fought a war against the U.S.-backed Contras. This year, Ortega’s political fortunes have risen thanks to growing discontent with conservative rule.

The economic policies of three conservative presidents have produced important reforms, including the signing of a free-trade treaty with the United States, but also have led hundreds of thousands of Nicaraguans to emigrate to neighboring Costa Rica and El Salvador in search of work.

“He’s the only one who has looked out for the interests of the poor,” said Martha Chavarria Rivera, a 38-year-old mother of four, explaining why she cast her ballot for Ortega. “My husband does whatever work he can find to survive because there’s hardly any jobs.”

Like many impoverished Nicaraguans, Chavarria had fond memories of Sandinista rule -- despite the runaway inflation and military draft of the 1980s, there also were subsidies for the poor.

“When he was president we had medicines, healthcare and schools,” said Chavarria, a resident of the neighborhood called Barrio Hugo Chavez, because the Venezuelan president donated money to bring electricity to its poor residents.

In this campaign season, Ortega has refashioned the Sandinista Front as a “big tent” party forming alliances with his old enemies, the Contras, and making peace with the Catholic Church. His vice presidential candidate, Jamie “the Godfather” Morales, was a key Contra political leader.

A week before the election, Sandinista legislators voted for a measure outlawing all forms of abortion, even those required to save the life of a mother.

But Ortega remains a polarizing figure, even as the Contra war fades into memory.

Over the last few years, the Sandinistas have reached a series of agreements with the Constitutional Liberal Party of Arnoldo Aleman, a right-wing former president convicted on corruption charges.

The alliance has granted the Sandinistas greater influence over the judiciary and has helped protect Ortega from prosecution on charges of sexually abusing his stepdaughter, critics say.

On Sunday, many Nicaraguans said they cast their votes for Montealegre, Rizo and Sandinista dissident Edmundo Jarquin solely to keep Ortega from returning to power.

“We’re hoping that the Sandinista Front doesn’t win,” said Marco Antonio Enriquez, 36, explaining why he voted for Montealegre, a 51-year-old Harvard-educated banker. “It would be a disaster for Nicaragua. We’ve already lived through those bad times once.”

Former President Carter is leading a team of international observes, amid fears the Sandinistas will use their influence over Nicaragua’s electoral court to rig what is expected to be a close result.

Montealegre met with Carter on Sunday afternoon and said afterward that hundreds of polling places were opening late and that voters were facing long delays once the polls did open.

“We’re afraid some people will get tired of waiting and give up,” Montealegre told reporters. “But we also know that the Nicaraguan people have given a lot of sweat and tears to win the right to vote.... They’ll wait in line, even with the sun and rain beating down on them.”

The watchdog group Ethics and Transparency reported that only 18% of the nation’s 10,000 polling stations opened on time, though most were open by 7 a.m., an hour after voting was supposed to begin.

“People are voting in high numbers, and in an orderly and peaceful manner,” said the group’s president, Pablo Ayon Garcia.

Nicaragua has been beset with power outages for months, and many people here feared that the daily blackouts might affect the counting of the votes.

“If the lights go out at night, when we’re counting the votes, then we’ll have a real serious problem,” said Mayrn Sevilla, a Montealegre representative at a Managua polling center. “We’re hoping that because it’s election day, they won’t turn out the lights.”

Officials said they were purchasing 50 megawatts of power from El Salvador to keep the lights on.

hector.tobar@latimes.com

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Times special correspondent Alex Renderos contributed to this report.