MANAGUA, Nicaragua (Reuters)——Nicaragua's former Marxist guerrilla leader Daniel Ortega was capped a long climb back to power Tuesday with an election victory that bolsters an anti-U.S. bloc in Latin America.
Ortega won Nicaragua's presidential election with about 38 percent of the votes, the country's top electoral official said Tuesday.
While Ortega, 60, kept a low profile waiting for the full results, thousands of left-wing Sandinista party supporters celebrated late into Monday night.
Ortega led a 1979 revolution against dictator Anastasio Somoza and then fought U.S.-backed Contra rebels in a vicious civil war in the 1980s.
He needed at least 35 percent and a lead of 5 points to take victory in the first round and avoid a difficult runoff.
Ortega's apparent return to power comes 16 years after losing a 1990 election near the end of the Contra war. It is a boost for Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, who is trying to build a Latin American alliance of anti-U.S. leaders.
Chavez helped Ortega's campaign by sending cheap fertilizer and fuel to Sandinista-led groups. He is expected to help finance social programs in Nicaragua, which trails only Haiti as the poorest country in the Western hemisphere.
Ortega has dropped his Marxism of the Cold War era and now speaks mainly of God, peace, and reconciliation.
He promises to work with business leaders and has backed a trade deal with the United States, but U.S. officials still do not trust him and worry about his friendship with Chavez.
Cuban Vice President Carlos Lage said Ortega's victory was a "resounding defeat" for the United States.
Still, Ortega knows well the cost of confrontation with Washington. Some 30,000 people were killed in the Contra war and a U.S. economic embargo caused chaos.
Combined with his Marxist government's mismanagement and heavy-handed repression of dissent, the U.S. campaign finally put Ortega out of power when voters elected the first of three straight Washington-backed presidents in 1990.
U.S. officials recently warned of a cut in investment and aid to Nicaragua if Ortega returned to power in this election, his third attempt.
Voters apparently ignored the warnings, although Ortega was also helped by divisions in the right, which had in previous elections united behind a single candidate to keep him out.
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