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The CSJ determined in 2011 that an article in the constitution banning indefinite reelection was a violation of Ortega’s right to be a candidate

Earlier the Supreme Electoral Council (CSE) cancelled the legal status of the leadership of the Independent Liberation Party (PLI), the largest member of the Coalition, and handed over PLI representation instead to a political faction supportive of the FSLN.

Social scientist Nicolás López Maltez, a member of Nicaragua’s Academy of Geography and History, said that the way Ortega has pursued his presidential aspirations is unparalleled in Central America in the past 150 years.

According to López Maltez and other analysts, Ortega has taken control of all government branches, and is therefore practically assured of victory at the ballot boxes in November.

Ortega has followed sound macroeconomic policies and this is recognised by both domestic and international organisations.

Opposition sectors claim the results of municipal elections in 2008 and of the 2011 general elections were fraudulent. Observers from the U.S. Carter Center and from the European Union observers/ said they lacked transparency.

But in May Ortega decided not to invite international or local electoral observers, whom he referred to as “shameless scoundrels.”

Humberto Meza, who holds a doctorate in social sciences, said that Ortega’s stratagems to perpetuate himself in power “will drastically affect the legitimacy of the elections,” no matter how high his popularity rating.The Supreme Court “is condemning a vast number of voters to non participation in the electoral process,” he told IPS.

Meza said the concern expressed by the OAS secretary general and any pressure exerted by the international community, led by the United States, were unlikely to have “much impact” on Nicaragua’s  domestic crisis

In June, the pro-Ortega Supreme Court ousted the opposition’s likely presidential candidate, Eduardo Montealegre, from his own party in favor of a pro-Ortega opponent who had sued for control

Mr. Ortega’s allies in the National Assembly expelled 16 lawmakers (and 12 alternates) from Mr. Montealegre’s party who refused to accept the court-imposed new party leader.

Nicaragua’s backsliding, after a brief period of relatively transparent politics in the 1990s, has proceeded with nothing but mild verbal opposition from Washington

the State Department has also pronounced itself “gravely concerned” by the crushing of the political opposition.

Dujarric said Ban was “shocked and deeply troubled” by the allegations that “go to the heart and integrity of the UN”.

Corruption is not business as usual at the UN.

Those charged in the criminal complaint unsealed on Tuesday in Manhattan federal court included Seng, who was arrested two weeks ago along with his chief assistant, Jeff C Yin, 29, a US citizen whose bail was revoked last week over allegations that he lied to investigators after his arrest.

Other money, they said, was used to lease a luxury car, pay his home mortgage, buy Rolex watches and custom suits, and construct a $30,000 basketball court at his home in Dobbs Ferry, New York, where he was arrested on Tuesday. He opened two bank accounts to receive the funds and then underreported his income by more than $1.2m, officials said.

Prosecutors said two other arrested individuals were involved with Ng. They were identified as Sheri Yan, 57, and Heidi Park, 52, both naturalized US citizens who reside in China and helped facilitate the scheme, prosecutors said.

A more important issue for many Uruguayans involved the handling of economic policy by the Broad Front, a coalition of left-wing parties, with Uruguay registering average growth of nearly 6 percent a year during the last nine years. Even as growth slowed this year, cautious economic policies were seen as shielding the country from external shocks.

“Practically 70 percent of Uruguayans hold a positive or very positive view of the economic situation in the country,”

during his first term, Dr. Vázquez also governed with his own style, reserving one morning each week to continue practicing medicine.

An increase in violent crime also weighed on voters, and Mr. Lacalle Pou, the conservative challenger and son of a former president, ran on a platform seeking to crack down on crime, reduce inflation and improve Uruguay’s schools.

“We have to recognize the gesture of President Barack Obama, a brave gesture and historically necessary, perhaps the most important step of his presidency,” Mr. Maduro said.

Daniel Ortega, the Nicaraguan president and former Sandinista rebel, was chastising Mr. Obama just days ago, saying the United States deserved the top spot in a new list of state sponsors of terrorism. Then, on Wednesday, he saluted the “brave decisions” of the American president.

“Our previous Cuba policy was clearly an irritant and a drag on our policy in the region,”

“It removes an excuse for blaming the United States for things,”

“In the last Summit of the Americas, instead of talking about things we wanted to focus on — exports, counternarcotics — we spent a lot of time talking about U.S.-Cuba policy,” said the official, who was not authorized to speak publicly. “A key factor with any bilateral meeting is, ‘When are you going to change your Cuba policy?’

But while sharp differences persist on many issues, other major Washington policy shifts have recently been applauded in the region, including Mr. Obama’s immigration plan and the resettlement in Uruguay of six detainees from Guantánamo Bay.

“There will be radical and fundamental change,” said Andrés Pastrana, a former president of Colombia. “I think that to a large extent the anti-imperialist discourse that we have had in the region has ended. The Cold War is over.”

Now the Ortegas and their allies control fuel companies, television stations and public construction projects.

She went public with rape accusations in 1998. But her mother, who has had seven children with Mr. Ortega as well, stood by him.Joined by Mr. Ortega and their adult children, Ms. Murillo held a news conference calling her eldest daughter a liar who suffered from psychological problems.

her loyalty to Mr. Ortega and her public defense of him were rewarded in the influence she has gained across the country.

war raged in Nicaragua as the victorious Sandinista revolutionaries fought insurgents known as the contras, who were backed by the administration of President Ronald Reagan. Mr. Ortega officially became president in 1984 and left office in 1990, when Nicaragua took steps toward peace.

The National Assembly and the courts were stacked with allies. The law was changed so that Mr. Ortega could run indefinitely.

Supreme Court banished a leading opposition figure from his own party, the Liberal Independent Party, preventing him from becoming an opponent in the November election.

even more power will be consolidated in the Ortega family.

“If a private company does not allow a married couple to work together, how is that allowed for a nation?”

“This is a movie we already saw, and we know how it ends,” said Mr. Ramírez, the former vice president. “It ends badly.”

At the time of the groundbreaking in December 2014, the Chinese government said it was not involved with the project. This and Mr. Wang’s recent setbacks — he has reportedly lost about 80 percent of his $10 billion fortune — make some experts say the deal is probably dead.

Some question whether the canal would even be commercially viable. Few supertankers and massive container ships now afloat will not be able to pass through the expanded Panama Canal set to open soon. And few ports are big enough to welcome those megaships. In the short term, some experts say, the combination of the Panama and Nicaragua canals would lead to overcapacity and price wars.

That aspect has prompted protests from farmers, some of which have turned violent. Experts say Mr. Wang will have to pay only the assessed value, or about 5 percent of the market value, for any lands he takes. But many farmers would not be entitled to even that. In a country that is short of adequate roads and government offices, many do not have formal title to the fields they have cultivated for generations.

But the plan is much broader than just a canal. Mr. Wang’s vision includes new airports, new ports on both ends of the canal, new lakes in the mountains to make sure the canal has enough water, and new islands in Lake Nicaragua to dispose of excavated sediment and rock. Advertisement Continue reading the main story A 1,100-page study of the project, conducted by the British consulting firm ERM and issued five months ago, reinforced the notion of how much is at stake. It recommended further studies in many areas before going forward and noted that a wide range of mitigation efforts would be needed, like reforestation and job training.Some see hope in those efforts. Jeffrey McCrary, an American fish biologist who lives in Nicaragua and worked on the study, supports the project, saying Mr. Wang’s company will have to provide money to clean up environmental damage already caused by deforestation, poor land management, crop fumigation and general dumping into Lake Nicaragua.

milo Lara, a member of the Nicaragua Canal Commission, a group appointed by the government to oversee the project, said many critics of the project were political opportunists. Mr. Lara said the canal plan had been adjusted to deal with problem issues, like potential earthquakes, tsunamis and environmental concerns. And people who might be displaced by it, he said, could be moved to small cities with new schools and services they never had before.

In the meantime, speculating about the canal has become a national pastime, though polls show that Nicaraguans grow less inclined to believe that it will be built.“We used to talk about it every day,” said Carlos Fernando Chamorro, the editor of Confidencial, an investigative magazine. “Now we only talk about it every two days.”Some still hope it will lift this country out of poverty.But in Brito and the nearby city of Rivas, those who expect to be displaced are angry. Teresa de Jesus Henriquez Delgado, 31, is one of the residents who used a stencil to paint “Go Away Chinese!” on the outside of her house. Advertisement Continue reading the main story “I will resist with all of my strength when the bulldozers come to tear down my house,” she said. “I will fight until I die. I have to for my children. They can’t take this land from my family.”

his makes it even more important that the parties … continue to respect the ceasefire

More than 220,000 people have died on the battlefield or in massacres during the conflict between leftist guerrillas, government troops and right-wing paramilitaries.

Santos has used his two terms in office to open negotiations with rebel leaders in four years of talks.

The peace accord was indeed a major achievement and, although the referendum was a setback,

hopefully this award will help peace builders maintain the momentum needed to keep the process moving forward,” Stockholm International Peace Research Institute Director Dan Smith said in a statement.

The big issues that divide the United States (and let's not forget, Canada) from its Latin American allies are Cuba, drugs, and immigration. On a trip to Latin America last year, in fact, Obama promised Salvadoran President Mauricio Funes that he would push immigration reform through Congress -- an effort he later abandoned. But for all their recent maturation, Latin American countries are affected by U.S. domestic issues in a way that no other region could be. Latin America therefore suffers from the paralysis of U.S. domestic politics as Europe or Asia does not.

even Washington's closest allies in the region have lost patience with U.S. politics

This year, Guatemalan President Otto Pérez Molina, a former general elected as a hard-liner, dramatically reversed course and spoke up in favor of drug legalization. This earned him extraordinary visits from both U.S. Vice President Joe Biden and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano. According to Eduardo Stein, the former vice president of Guatemala, Biden said that the United States was eager to discuss drug reform, just not at the summit, while Napolitano reportedly plainly said, "Don't think of raising the issue at the summit." Pérez then went ahead and called a meeting of regional leaders, who could not agree on an alternative set of policies but decided to raise the issue in Cartagena. Pérez later said that drug policy was the only issue discussed at the summit's final closed-door session.

Given that, the political partnership of Ortega and Murillo leads many here to speculate that she aspires to succeed Ortega as president one day.

Barring illness or death, the 67-year-old Ortega is not likely to leave office soon, thanks to his backers in Congress and on the Supreme Court who approved a constitutional change allowing for unlimited re-election

They control fuel companies, television stations and public construction projects, which has many critics comparing his family to the right-wing Somoza dynasty that Mr. Ortega helped topple in 1979.

They complain they are broke and say the reason they are not more successful is that they do not have international aid, as they did during the Reagan administration.

Though Mr. Ortega enjoys strong support among the poor, he was widely criticized for constitutional changes that repealed term limits, allowing him to run this year for a third consecutive term.

The government denies that politically motivated rebels in the country still exist, despite occasional attacks on police stations and the killings of Sandinistas and known contras

That war ended more than 25 years ago, when Mr. Ortega lost at the polls. But since being re-elected in 2006, Mr. Ortega has come to rule over this Central American nation in sweeping fashion.

Venezuela has provided Nicaragua with hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of oil a year on preferential terms, and the government acknowledges that much of it is invested in private companies closely tied to the Ortega family and its allies.

“The Ortega-Murillo family is getting richer while the country people starve,” a rebel who calls himself Commander Rafael said about the president and his wife, Rosario Murillo

He said the Ortega administration must be doing something right. In January, the World Bank projected Nicaragua’s economy to grow by 4.2 percent in 2016, one of the highest rates in Latin America.

It is no wonder: 38 percent of the Venezuelan oil is used to fund social projects. More than 35,000 houses have been distributed among the poor in the past two years, according to a government website. World Bank statistics show that the poverty level dropped six percentage points from 2005 to 2009.

“He might have an expensive car, but the other presidents before him had their luxuries but did not help the people,” Veronica Aguilar, 55, said of Mr. Ortega.

The rebels are not buying it. In a sign of the new allegiance the socialist administration has to the country’s richest people, the government has lifted import taxes for luxury items like yachts and helicopters.

Last week three Americans, working for the US Department of Homeland Security, were expelled from Nicaragua without explanation.

After more than a decade out of power Ortega was re-elected in 2006 and has tried to reintroduce socialist policies. He has also announced plans for a huge canal, to rival the Panama Canal, which would be funded by a Chinese consortium.

Correspondents say President Santos has risked his political future on the success of the peace deal.

But after 50 years of war, many Colombians still aren't ready to forgive. As President Santos put it, the hard work of building peace now lies ahead.

President Santos said this historic moment was a message from Colombia to the world: no more war. "No more war," the crowd chanted in return.

However, only hours before the signing, the EU announced it would suspend the Farc from its list.

1964: Set up as armed wing of Communist Party2002: At its height, it had an army of 20,000 fighters controlling up to a third of the country. Senator Ingrid Betancourt kidnapped and held for six years along with 14 other hostages2008: The Farc suffers a series of defeats in its worst year2012: Start of peace talks in Havana2016: Definitive ceasefire

President Bush could go a long way toward restoring peace in Nicaragua, and U.S.-Nicaraguan relations, if he proposed to use his influence and support--together with other heads of state, the World Bank and various other international agencies--to help launch a resettlement program, in Nicaragua

Nicaraguans who have sought asylum abroad would be enticed to return home. However, such a project to restore our dignity as Nicaraguans can be possible only if the Sandinista regime takes a sincere decision to adopt democracy.

Mr Santos had supported Mr Uribe early on, founding a party to back Mr Uribe's campaign for president when the latter was still a relatively unknown candidate.

However, Mr Santos' approval ratings remained high and he resigned as defence minister in 2009 to be able to run for president in 2010.

Once again, Nicaragua finds itself in a nefarious cycle in which advocates of change must depend on external pressure to compensate for an inability of the country to find domestic solutions to its problems of governance. The only piece of good news seems to be that Mr. Ortega’s apparent strength rises from clay feet. As Somoza’s experience demonstrated, in a one-person regime that aspires to be a one-family dictatorship, the inevitable corruption and repression that it cultivates eventually make the regime unsustainable.

Mr. Zuluaga has charged that Mr. Santos is liable to concede too much to achieve peace, including allowing guerrilla leaders to skip serious punishment. He has said, however, that he would consider continuing the talks if the FARC stopped all criminal activity.Mr. Zuluaga’s closeness to Mr. Uribe has been a central element of his campaign. Mr. Uribe, a polarizing figure with a strong political base, backed Mr. Santos when he ran for president in 2010. But they later became fierce enemies, splitting over the peace talks, which Mr. Uribe opposed.

According to the government’s investigation, the students were arrested by police officers in the town of Iguala, in the southwestern state of Guerrero, and handed over to the local drug gang on the orders of the mayor, José Luis Abarca, on the night of Sept. 26.

Investigators say they believe the students were killed that night and their bodies burned. But the students’ families have refused to believe the government’s version, and daily protests, led by demonstrators bearing pictures of the missing, are a reminder of the government’s failure to improve security and its inability to tackle corruption.