Students Continue to Challenge Ortega in Nicaragua

HAVANA TIMES – Numerous university students were still demonstrating Tuesday in the streets of Managua, the capital of Nicaragua, to demand that President Daniel Ortega leave office, reported dpa news.

Although in Nicaragua there was no celebration Tuesday of International Workers’ Day, the young people demonstrated in rejection of the dialogue with those they consider responsible for the deaths of dozens of young people in the clashes that took place between April 18 and 24, when the governing party’s youth squads and the Riot Police attacked the peaceful protests.

“Get out Ortega!” and “Out (Vice President Rosario) Murillo!” shouted the young people outside the National University of Engineering (UNI), one of the main scenarios in which the incidents broke out, in the center of Managua.

Protesters also blocked the passage to vehicles on Avenida Juan Pablo II, at the entrance to the Central American University (UCA), where there was no police presence, nor attacks by the shock forces of Ortega’s party.

Meanwhile, another group of young people and family members rebuilt the altars in memory of the dead in the protests they had erected at the Jean Paul Genie roundabout, southwest of the city, and were destroyed by unidentified persons earlier in the day.

Ortega says he wants a dialogue with the mediation of the Episcopal Conference after the rebellion of students and other civil sectors [which he likened to the Contras of the 1980s] that his Government faced last week. However it may be several weeks before an agenda and the participants are defined.