Sandinistas Claim Victory For Ortega in Nicaraguan Election
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

Euphoric Sandinistas claimed victory in Nicaragua’s presidential election yesterday as early results indicated a dramatic return to power for a former Marxist guerrilla leader, Daniel Ortega.
With 40% of the ballots counted, the former Cold War enemy of America, Mr. Ortega led with 40.1% support, 7% ahead of his American-backed rival, Eduardo Montealegre.
If he maintained his lead, Mr. Ortega, 60, and the Sandinistas would be back in power in the central American country 16 years after losing an election at the end of a bloody civil war against American-backed Contra rebels.
A victory for Mr. Ortega would be a major irritant for America, which fears that Nicaragua would become the latest country to join a regional anti-American bloc championed by President Chavez of oil-rich Venezuela. Yesterday, as votes were still being counted, Mr. Montealegre challenged the results. He claimed that the election had been beset by irregularities.
Mr. Montealegre insisted that his party, the National Liberal Alliance, had won enough votes to force a second round. “No one has won here,” he said. “The Nicaraguan people, in a run-off, will determine the next president.”
American officials in Nicaragua said they had found irregularities in Sunday’s vote. The officials refused to back the election until the returns were in, and reports of polling stations opening late and closing early were investigated. But in the barrios, hordes of Ortega voters charged through the streets waving the red and black flags of the Sandinista National Liberation Front.
“We were barely managing to survive,” one mother shouted, as she stopped jumping around long enough to speak to television crews. “Now we will have free medicine, free schools.”
Mr. Ortega led the revolution that toppled Anastasio Somoza, the American-backed dictator, in 1979.
The Sandinista leader then allied Nicaragua with the Soviet Union as much of Central America became a Cold War battleground.