by the El Reportero’s wire services
Daniel OrtegaChanges to the Nicaraguan constitution that allow President Daniel Ortega to run for re-election as many times as he wishes entered into force Tuesday with their publication in the official gazette.
The document was dated Feb. 10, but the Web site of the official gazette was knocked out Monday by a group of hackers calling themselves the Algerian Ghosts.
The amended constitution eliminates both term limits for presidents and the requirement to win an absolute majority at the ballot box to become head of state.
From now on, a plurality will be sufficient.
Other new provisions give Ortega the authority to reactive retired military personnel and police and to place them in civilian organizations within the executive branch.
The president will also be able to keep public officials in posts for the time he deems appropriate.
The reforms were pushed through at the end of last year by the governing Sandinista party’s majority in congress and approved despite the rejection of the opposition, social movements, civic groups, feminist organizations and businessmen. “We reject the reforms because they were born illegally,” the leader of the Sandinista Renewal Movement, Ana Margarita Vigil, told Efe.
The opposition’s argument is that there was insufficient consultation regarding the reforms and, because of their impact, they should have been submitted to a referendum.
Ortega, 68, who won reelection in 2011 with 62.45 percent of the vote in an process plagued by accusations of irregularities, is currently in his second consecutive term and third overall.
The president has spent almost half his life as the undisputed leader of the Sandinista National Liberation Front, or FSLN, which toppled the fourdecade- long Somoza dictatorship in the late 1970s Nicaragua’s next general elections are scheduled for 2016.
Spain-China relations tense following arrest warrants for ex-president
A Spanish judge’s decision to issue arrest warrants for China’s former president and other senior officials in a case over alleged genocide in Tibet could harm relations between the two countries, the Chinese Foreign Ministry said Tuesday. “China is strongly dissatisfied and firmly opposed to the erroneous acts taken by the Spanish agencies in disregard of China’s position,” ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying.
“Whether or not this issue can be appropriately dealt with is related to the healthy development of ties,” she told reporters during the ministry’s regular daily briefing. She commented a day after Spanish National Court Judge Ismael Moreno issued warrants for the arrest of former Chinese President Jiang Zemin, who retired a decade ago, and four other erstwhile top officials.
The case was brought by pro-Tibetan activists in Spain. The National Court agreed to hear the case based on the principle of universal jurisdiction and on the fact that one of the plaintiffs – a Tibetan monk – has Spanish citizenship.
pain’s Parliament was set on Tuesday to debate a bill presented by the governing conservative Popular Party to restrict the conditions under which Spanish courts may investigate alleged crimes committed outside the national territory.
If approved, the measure would paralyze the case against the former Chinese officials.
China respects the principle of non-interference in the internal affairs of other countries and, therefore, it is not commenting on what may occur in the Spanish Parliament, the foreign ministry’s Hua said Tuesday.
China insists Tibet has been part of its territory for centuries, though Tibetans say the “Roof of the World” was effectively independent until being occupied by the Red Army in the early 1950s.
Tibet’s spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, fled to India after a failed uprising in the late 50s.
