U.S. President Joe Biden criticized Nicaragua’s vote on Sunday as a “pantomime election that was neither free nor fair” and said the U.S. will use all available diplomatic and economic tools to pressure President Daniel Ortega.
Ortega and his wife Rosario Murillo, who is also the nation’s vice-president, “now rule Nicaragua as autocrats, no different from the Somoza family that Ortega and the Sandinistas fought four decades ago,” Biden said in statement on Sunday.
Biden urged Nicaragua’s government to “immediately and unconditionally” release dozens of opposition figures from detention, including seven presidential candidates, and said the White House is in close coordination with the international community to hold Ortega and Murillo accountable for abuses.
