Nicaragua held elections that look certain to hand another term to popular President Daniel Ortega, and make his wife vice president, but which the opposition said was marked by "massive" voter abstention.

Speaking just after casting his own ballot, and as polling closed at 6:00 pm (0000 GMT Monday), Ortega said "it's a vote for peace, for the security of the Nicaraguan people."

Results in the presidential and legislative elections were expected within hours.

Pre-poll voter surveys predicted support as high as 70 percent for Ortega. His nearest rival, a lawyer from the conservative Constitutionalist Liberal Party, Maximo Rodriguez, is credited with eight percent.

Murillo, whom many see as already sharing power and well-positioned to go from vice president to head of state in the future, described the vote as "exemplary."

But the opposition, which has been sidelined by Ortega and largely booted out of the National Assembly by recent court decisions, questioned the legitimacy of the elections, calling them a "farce."

"It's obvious across the country that absenteeism was massive," the head of the opposition Broad Front for Democracy party, Violeta Granera, told reporters.

"We calculate between 70 and 80 percent abstention," with voters notably staying away in areas traditionally loyal to Ortega's Sandinista National Liberation Front party, she said.

Men armed with machetes and sticks set fire to one polling station in a rural area 300 kilometers (190 miles) east of Managua, through which Ortega has controversially proposed building a canal to rival the one in Panama.

Support of the poor 

No preliminary turnout figures were released by officials during the day.

But Telemaco Talavera, head of the National Council of Universities, accredited to monitor the vote, said before polls closed: "There has been an excellent turnout."

Foreign observers were barred from monitoring the process. But some Latin American officials -- including a couple of former presidents from Guatemala and Paraguay -- were invited to drop into polling stations to greet workers.

Ortega, a 70-year-old former Marxist rebel, can count on strong support from Nicaragua's poor, who account for more than a third of the population, and who have benefited from social programs.

The country's powerful business interests have also been well-served from economic stability and security under Ortega that has promoted vibrant growth and investment.

But with billions of dollars in credit from troubled ally Venezuela drying up, and massive infrastructure projects -- such as the mooted canal -- failing to materialize, Nicaragua's prospects are clouding over.

A fourth mandate? 

If the results confirm his triumph, it would be Ortega's fourth presidential mandate.

He has served two consecutive terms since 2007, and previously between 1985 and 1990, when his Sandinista rebels emerged victorious from a revolution that toppled a dictatorial dynasty.

(Yahoo)