Nicaragua: Daniel Ortega winning re-election in Nicaragua by wide margin | Macleans.ca

President and one-time Sandinista revolutionary Daniel Ortega appeared to have won easy re-election in Nicaragua, according to results released Monday, overcoming a constitutional limit on re-election and reports of voting problems. Ortega had a roughly 2-1 lead over his nearest challenger, Fabio Gadea, while former President Arnoldo Aleman was a distant third with 6 per cent with about 44 per cent of the votes counted by midday.

Electoral council President Roberto Rivas said shortly after Sunday’s vote that a representative quick count of the results gave Ortega a large advantage as well, but he did not describe how that survey was conducted.

Nicaragua: Observers decry vote irregularities as Nicaragua’s Ortega seeks new term | MiamiHerald.com

Observers from the European Union and the Organization of American States reported Sunday that they had detected serious irregularities in voting in what is expected to be a re-election victory for Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega. Ortega, a onetime leftist guerrilla leader and acolyte of Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez, is seeking his third term in office despite the Nicaraguan Constitution’s ban on presidents serving consecutive terms.

Voting was marred by scattered violence, including reports of gunfire that wounded four people near the coffee-growing city of Matagalpa and arson attacks on several rural precincts. Elsewhere, voting occurred without incident as Nicaragua’s 3.4 million voters aged 16 and older cast ballots for president, vice president and 90 deputies of the National Assembly. Even so, chiefs of the two major international observer teams in Nicaragua for the election voiced deep reservations about how the vote was conducted.

Ecuador: Observation Missions in Peru and Ecuador Extolled Efficiency and Progress in Electoral Processes | webnewswire.com

During the Council session, held at OAS headquarters, the Organization’s Secretary General, José Miguel Insulza, remarked that “the electoral process in all of our countries is increasingly more normal and increasingly more transparent,” making special reference to the elections in Peru and Ecuador, and added that the OAS is “very proud to be a part of this process, in which more and more people want to participate.”

According to the report, the EOM that followed the second round of general elections in Peru was composed of 73 observers, 21 from Member States and 7 from Observer States, deployed throughout the Peruvian territory. The report indicates that the observation work was based on a sample designed to collect significant data about voter behavior.

In his presentation, the Chief of Mission, Ambassador Dante Caputo, asserted that “it is very difficult to write the account of this second round because things went very well in Peru,” while highlighting the normalcy of the conditions during the elections. “I cannot tell you about any incidents or violent acts or abnormalities because, simply, they did not happen,” he said, concluding that “electoral democracy is evolving and Peru is a good example of what Latin America is doing in this field.”