by the El Reportero news services
An opinion poll, published on 11 Oct., and the resignation of Alvaro Colom’s chief strategist, point to a win for the right wing candidate, Otto Pérez Molina, in the decisive second round of the presidential elections on 4 November.
The resignation of José Carlos Marroquín, Colom’s chief strategist, is the more important event. The manner of his resignation was odd: in an impromptu press conference Marroquín declared that he was “fighting against those who had brought Guatemala to its knees.”
The spin on this was that he was resigning because of death threats against his family. His words, however, could prove the deathknell for Colom’s faltering campaign: Colom’s campaign has been beset by allegations of corruption and links to organised crime.
Nicaraguan press accuses Ortega of disrespecting journalists
The Nicaraguan press accused this Friday President Daniel Ortega of “humiliating” and “disrespecting” journalists, to whom he forced to cover a governmental event with businesspeople until late hours of the night under the rain and through speakers.
Diario in his Friday edition.“The journalists who have had to come to enduring official acts that begin with several hours of delay, yesterday were submitted to a major scorn” when they were forced to listen “ the interventions of the exhibitors under the rain, via government radio, which were the only ones that were authorized to transmit the event,” denounced El Nuevo
The newspaper referred to the top business meeting held on Thursday with Ortega in a center of the capital to coordinate actions, to which only the official press had access.
“The monopoly of the transmissions is an abuse, but after everything, these official auditions do not have the same credibility as the independent media, which must not keep on being knocked down by the communication governmental policies,” said El Nuevo Diario.
The newspaper qualified the attitude of the president towards the press as “ a humiliation “, which adds to “ the recurrent delays “ of the activities of Ortega, which end at late hours of the night.
Also has expressed its protest the opponent daily La Prensa – summoned by the government for supposed tax debts – after its strong critiques against the Sandinista government for concealing public information and dismissing the officials who spread news without authorization of President Ortega, the leader Sandinista who returned to power last January.
