The president of the United States, Joe Biden, described as "farce" the Nicaraguan elections in which President Daniel Ortega has secured his fourth consecutive term after preventing the participation of his main rivals.
"The election that Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega and his wife, Vice President Rosario Murillo, orchestrated today was a pantomime election that was neither free nor fair, and certainly not democratic."Biden said according to a White House statement about "the farce of the Nicaraguan elections".
The Ortega regime "rigged the result long before election day" by incarcerating 39 opposition figures, including seven aspiring presidential candidates, and "block political parties"says the published text as soon as the polls closed.
Biden also attacked the Nicaraguan leader for having smothered and "intimidated" independent media as well as the private sector and civil society.
"Unpopular for a long time and now without a democratic mandate, the Ortega and Murillo family now rule Nicaragua as an autocrat"said the president.
Biden sued Ortega "take immediate action to restore democracy" and the release of "the unjustly imprisoned".
USA "will use all the diplomatic and economic tools at its disposal to support the Nicaraguan people and hold the Ortega-Murillo government and those who facilitate its abuses accountable"added the president.
Washington and the European Union have already imposed sanctions on members of the Ortega family and their allies following the wave of arrests that preceded Sunday’s election.
.