by the El Reportero’s news services
Daniel Ortega
Led by two Supreme Court justices, supporters of Nicaragua’s leftist president threw rocks and fireworks at a hotel where opposition lawmakers tried to meet Tuesday to overturn a decree extending the judges’ terms.
The latest chapter in a fight over the limits of President Daniel Ortega’s power started earlier in the day when hundreds of people backing his Sandinista Party blocked entrances to the Congress building to keep opposition lawmkers out.
A pro-government crowd then assaulted the Holiday Inn Hotel as legislators sought to hold a session in a conference room.
‘’They are trying to block us with their mobs,’’ opposition congressman Carlos Noguera said.
The spokesman for the opposition Liberal Party, Leonel Teller, said three of the party’s legislators were hit by rocks and were being treated for their injuries.
Supreme Court Justices Rafael Solis and Armengol Cuadra, Sandinista allies whose terms expired earlier this month, led the crowd that attacked the hotel.
Asked about the stones and fireworks, Solis told journalists, ‘’The owners have insurance.’’ Ortega has depended on the highly politicized Supreme Court for rulings like one by pro-Sandinista justices in October that overruled constitutional term limits, allowing the president to run for a second consecutive term.
The Liberal Party has called Ortega’s decree ‘’a coup against the country’s
governmental institutions.’’ ‘’The president does not have the authority to name justices,’’ the party said in a statement. ‘’The legislature does.’’ Congress has been unable to name replacements for the two justices because neither the Sandinistas nor the Liberals have a majority in the legislature.
Chinchilla’s victory – indicative of progress for women in the region?
The recent victory of Laura Chinchilla in Costa Rica’s February presidential elections and her appointment of a cabinet with unprecedented numbers of female ministers has generated fresh debate about the political participation of women in the region.
Chinchilla’s election refl ects a new trend in Central and Latin America over the past fi fteen years of record numbers of women being voted into high level political offi ce.
At the same time this progress has been offset by legislative developments across the region that represent a grave step backwards for women’s rights. This, coupled with record levels of “femicide” (the killing of women purely because they are women) suggest that considerable work remains to redress gender inequality in the region.
ICJ’s salomonic verdict on paper mill
The International Court of Justice (ICJ) at The Hague issued its verdict on April 20, on the dispute between Argentina and Uruguay over the construction of the UPM (formerly Botnia) paper mill on the banks of the river Uruguay, which acts as natural border between the two countries.
The ICJ issued a salomonic verdict, ruling that Uruguay had violated articles 7-12 of the 1975 Treaty of the River Uruguay, since it failed to inform the Comisión Administradora del Río Uruguay (CARU) of its intentions to build the mill.
The ICJ did not support Argentina’s claim that the mill pollutes the river.
The conflict is set to continue, after Argentine protestors declared that they would not comply with the ruling, stating, ‘the verdict justifies our struggle’ and vowing to fight on until the mill is dismantled ‘brick by brick’.
(Latin News and Associated Press contributed to this report.)
