Nicaraguan 'bipartisanship'

I missed this story when it came out on Sunday, but the Chicago Tribune ran an article that does a good job capturing the current problems in Nicaragua. The main problem is that the corrupt right has aligned with the corrupt left in trying to take down the center-right reformist president.

They are the odd couple of Nicaraguan politics, two old enemies working together to take over the country.

One is former President Daniel Ortega, the leader of the Marxist Sandinistas who battled U.S.-funded contra rebels in the 1980s and is running for president again next year for the third time since being voted out of office in 1990.

The other is former President Arnoldo Aleman, leader of Nicaragua's right-wing Liberal Party, who portrayed himself as the country's savior from the Sandinistas in the 1990s but who appears to have softened his view since being imprisoned for embezzling $100 million while in office.

Combining their party votes for a majority in the National Assembly, the two men have nearly paralyzed the government of President Enrique Bolanos. They have stripped away his ability to oversee public services, solve land disputes and destroy old missiles that the U.S. fears will fall into the hands of terrorists.

Also from the region, several Central American nations went on a very strange terror alert this week in search of some Al Qaeda operatives. The alert started when Nicaragua sent pictures of the suspects to their border guards. Once asked, nearly everyone in Central America, Interpol and the US denied having intelligence indicating the terrorists were in the region. Now, everything has somewhat calmed down. I have no idea what all that was about, maybe someone had intelligence and maybe it was just a test, but it certainly created some noise in the region's media.