MANAGUA - (AP) -- The candidate for Nicaragua's leftist Sandinista Front claimed victory Monday in weekend mayoral elections in the capital, saying ``the future would triumph over the past.''

Preliminary results from Managua polls favored Dionisio Marenco, a 58-year-old engineer and former militant of the Sandinista Front who was commerce and transportation minister during Sandinista regimes of the 1980s.

The Sandinistas also led the popular vote in 151 other cities across Nicaragua with 40 percent of ballots counted. Complete results were not expected until later.

The Sandinista Front, which had close ties to Cuba and the Soviet Union, retook Managua during 2000 elections, when Herty Lewites defeated a candidate of the Liberal Constitutionalist Party.

''I told you the future would triumph over the past,'' Marenco told supporters gathered at a local school. He said his apparent victory was ``the culmination of a long and difficult journey.''

Sunday's elections were the first since supporters of President Enrique Bolaños broke with the Constitutionalist Party to form the Alliance for the Republic. The balloting was being watched as a political barometer more than halfway through the president's five-year term.

The country's Supreme Electoral Council reported that Marenco had received 44 percent of the vote; Pedro Joaquin Chamorro, candidate of the ruling Liberal Constitutionalist Party and son of former President Violeta Barrios de Chamorro, 36 percent; and Alejandro Fiallos, of the Alliance, 22 percent.