Nicaraguan Election
Tribunal Stands For Now: Ortega
MANAGUA (Reuters) - Nicaraguan President
Daniel Ortega issued a decree on Saturday
that could extend the terms of electoral
officials supporting his controversial bid
for re-election in 2011, a move the
opposition says oversteps his powers.
Nicaragua's Congress is charged with
appointing electoral authorities, but
lawmakers -- split between backers of
Ortega's leftist Sandinista party and
right-wing opponents -- have been unable to
agree on whether the officials should be
replaced.
Ortega's decree stipulates that the current
electoral tribunal will remain in place if
Congress fails to decide by February who
should sit on the panel.
The electoral authorities supported a
Supreme Court decision last October that
would allow Ortega -- a former guerrilla and
U.S. foe -- to run again for president.
"To avoid a power vacuum, the terms (of the
officials) will be extended ... if Congress
does not name new authorities or ratify the
existing (authorities)," Ortega said at an
event late on Saturday.
Opposition leaders said Ortega's decree was
usurping legislative powers. The U.S. State
Department has warned that the push for
re-election could threaten democracy in the
Central American country.
"He cannot act like a supreme power and pass
over the law," said Eduardo Montealegre, who
lost the 2006 presidential election to
Ortega. "He wants a dictatorship in
Nicaragua," Montealegre, a Liberal Party
congressman, told local television.
Latin America is wrestling with the issue of
presidential term limits as leftists like
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez seek to
extend their time in power. Central America
is caught in its worst political crisis in
decades after Honduras toppled President
Manuel Zelaya amid accusations he was
seeking to stay in office.
Ortega, whose Cold War-era Sandinista rebels
fought U.S.-backed government forces in a
civil war, said last July that Nicaragua
should lift term limits.
Ortega first took power after the 1979
revolution and was formally elected
president in 1984. After his Sandinista
party lost power in 1990, the opposition
banned consecutive re-election.
He was re-elected in 2007, but presidents
are barred from serving more than two terms. |
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