martes, agosto 17, 2010

Nicaragua's Daniel Ortega lays groundwork to stay in power - Miami Herald

Miami Herald, 17708/2010, excerpt/extracto.-

The constitution bars Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega from seeking reelection next year, but that's not stopping the one-time leftist revolutionary.
Billboards and murals are going up across Nicaragua announcing ``Daniel -- 2011,'' making it plain that Ortega intends to stay at the helm.
At 64, Ortega still has some of the panache of his guerrilla days three decades ago, when the Sandinista National Liberation Front swept away the Somoza family dictatorship, which had ruled Nicaragua for four decades. Now, however, Ortega is laying the groundwork to rule Nicaragua for a long time himself in apparent defiance of the constitution.
With some arm-twisting, Ortega gained a faint judicial green light to seek reelection. Last October, he won a ruling from a Supreme Court stacked with his supporters that Article 147 of the constitution, which bans the reelection of a sitting president, doesn't apply to him.
"This is the only country in the world where the court has declared the constitution unconstitutional. . . . It's a legal subterfuge,'' said Vilma Núñez, the head of the Nicaraguan Center for the Defense of Human Rights, which at one time was sympathetic to the Sandinista front.

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