Ortega leads Nicaraguan presidential vote

Daniel Ortega, the leader of the Sandinista revolution in the 1980s, is on track to win a third term as Nicaragua's president, the nation's top election official said on Monday. With 7% of the votes counted, Ortega leads with 67% over Fabio Gadea of the Independent Liberal Party with nearly 26% and Arnoldo Aleman of the Constitutional Liberal Party with 7.1%, electoral council President Roberto Rivas said. Ortega, the incumbent president, now professes to be a born-again Christian. He first served as president in 1985-1990 and was elected to a second term in 2006. He had been barred from running for a second consecutive term, but in 2009 the Supreme Court overturned that constitutional prohibition. Voters are electing the president, vice president, and members of the National Assembly (parliament). Nicaragua is one of the few countries to recognize the independence of Georgian breakaway republic Abkhazia. The others are Russia, Venezuela, Nauru, Tuvalu and Vanuatu.