Backgrounder: Key facts about Nicaragua's general elections

Backgrounder: Key facts about Nicaragua's general elections

Nicaraguans will cast their votes Sunday to choose a president, vice president, 90 deputies of the National Assembly and 20 Central American parliamentarians.

The following are some key facts about the elections.

In Nicaragua, citizens over 16 years old are eligible to vote, and over 3.4 million of Nicaragua's 5.8 million have registered to vote in Sunday's elections.

Polls are scheduled to open at 7 a.m. local time (1300 GMT) and close at 6 p.m. (0000 GMT). A total of 12,985 polling stations will be installed in 153 municipalities across Nicaragua's 16 provinces.

Five candidates are competing for the presidency, but latest opinion polls show that Nicaragua's incumbent President Daniel Ortega, candidate of the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN), is ahead with a solid lead of about 48 percent of votes.

Fabio Gadea of the Independent Liberal Party (PLI) Alliance is second with 30 percent, while Arnoldo Aleman, who was president from 1997 to 2002 and is the candidate for the Constitutional Liberal Party, is third in polls with about 10 percent of the votes.

Under Nicaragua's electoral laws, a candidate must win at least 40 percent of valid votes in the first round in order to win, or get at least 35 percent of the vote and have an advantage of 5 percent or more over the closest runner-up. The elections are organized by the Supreme Electoral Council.

The Nicaraguan Congress has 90 members, who all are elected for the five-year 2012-2017 term that runs parallel to the presidency.

About 100 observers from the European Union (EU) and 80 observers from the Organization of American States (OAS) are going to monitor the elections.

A total of 20,000 national police and army security forces will be deployed in Nicaragua Sunday to ensure that the voting process will go smoothly.

Editor: Yang Lina

English.news.cn   2011-11-06 13:22:11 FeedbackPrintRSS
MANAGUA, Nov. 5 (Xinhua)