Weekly Report - 25 September 2008 (ISSN 1741-7422)

NICARAGUA | Violence. With less than two months to go until municipal elections, tension erupted in the municipality of León, northwest of Managua, where anti-government protesters were attacked by supporters of President Daniel Ortega on 20 September. Dozens of people were injured and the vehicle of the president of the dissident Sandinista party, Movimiento Renovador Sandinista (MRS), Enrique Sáenz, was torched. The demonstration, which had been suspended for security concerns, had initially been called to protest a series of controversial rulings by the supreme electoral court ahead of the 9 November elections: the banning of two political parties, the MRS and Partido Conservador; and the postponement of elections in seven municipalities in the North Atlantic Autonomous Region, which the opposition was likely to win. The Nicaraguan centre for human rights laid the blame for the violence squarely on Ortega, warning that it constituted “criminal intimidation".