Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega played with the thought of dissolving congress and forming an interim governing council like one that ran the Central American country after its 1979 Sandinista revolution. Ortega, a former Sandinsita rebel leader, suggested the measure in a meeting with business leaders as a possible way out of the country’s political standoff.

“We could say: dissolve the National Assembly,” Ortega said in a speech posted on a government website today, “that would be a way out, but imagine what would happen if I mandate that solution. It would be a catastrophe, a riot. ‘What barbarity, what dictatorship,’ they would say.’”

Opposition lawmaker Jose Pallais said Ortega suggested the idea half-jokingly so he could test the waters. Opposition lawmakers have been accusing Ortega of imposing single party rule since his Sandinistas allegedly rigged 2008 mayoral elections in their favor. Last month, rock-launching Ortega supporters attacked opposition lawmakers seeking to block Ortega’s bid to seek a third term in a 2011 vote. Said Pallais: “Ortega has an illusion that he can get rid of any sign of opposition, even within the branches of government.”

The ruling Sandinista party, which toppled U.S.-backed dictator Anastasio Somoza in a 1979 revolution and battled U.S.-sponsored contras during the 80s, uses the word quite frequently to describe their foes. It was the same word used by the country’s rebel hero, Augusto C. Sandino, to denounce his conservative adversaries. Sandino led a 7-year guerrilla war against occupying US marines – whose intervention had been invited by his enemies – that dragged into the 1930s.

President and former rebel leader Daniel Ortega, who like his father is an avid Sandino admirer, is a staunch opponent of the vendepatria and loves to rally his party around his hatred of them.

But knowing the enemy was easier when the US considered Latin America its backyard. As US influence in the region wanes, the Sandinistas are becoming paranoid of selling out the country to other allies that have gained sway.

After Ortega took office, Iran announced grandiose plans to build hydroelectric dams and help fund a deep-water port in Nicaragua. But the plans have fizzled for “technical reasons,” according to Iranian ambassador Akbar Pour, who hasn’t given any further details. The word is that Iran clashed with the Sandinista politburo because they wanted more control over the investments than the Sandinistas were willing to give .

More recently, the Sandinistas had a falling out with Rafael Paniagua, the Venezuelan manager of  joint Venezuelan-Nicaraguan venture Albanisa, which manages much of the Venezuelan aid flowing into Nicaragua and has bought up energy concessions, a hotel, ranchland, a TV station and oil distribution concession. Paniagua apparently angered the Sandinistas with comments to local press revealing the purchase of TV Channel 8 as part of a plan to “build a nation.”

The comments were enough to set off first lady Rosario Murillo, who became the de facto spokeswoman when Ortega created a position and appointed her to it in an open act of nepotism. She released a statement denying Paniagua’s comments and Paniagua no longer manages Albanisa. El Nuevo Diario reports he is now causing problems back in Caracas for the Sandinistas which may threaten the flow of petrodollars. No joke, since Chavez’s aid since Ortega took office has reached around $1 billion, filling funding gaps left by aid cuts from US and European countries concerned with a lack of electoral transparency after a vote in November 2008.

Salvadoran President Mauricio Funes asked Salvadorans today to forgive the 1980 death squad assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero, marking the first time the government claims responsibility for the murder.

“As President of the Republic, I request pardon in the name of the Salvadoran state for that assassination perpetrated 30 years ago,” Funes said. Romero was murdered by a death squad that acted with “the collaboration, acquiescence or participation of state agents.”

The author of Romero’s murder, which took place at the beginning of the Central American country’s 12-year civil war, was Roberto D’Aubisson, a former congress leader and presidential candidate, according to an interview today with one of the members of D’Aubisson’s death squad in San Salvador-based Web site Elfaro.net.

A 1993 U.N.-sponsored truth commission also found  D’Abuisson, who founded the Nationalist Republican Alliance party. The party’s leaders have defended their late leader, who died of cancer of in 1992, and didn’t recognize the commission findings.

The party, known as Arena, governed El Salvador for 20 years until Funes, a journalist who ran on the ticket of the left-wing the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front party, was elected in 2009. Funes’ party was born from a former guerrilla movement that fought against the rightwing government.

The elfaro.net interview does a solid job of getting inside of the head of one of the psychopathic death squad members and is a detailed summary of the Romero assassination with such anecdotes: the American arms trafficker that supplied the death squad used to smuggle weapons across borders hidden beneath stacks of Playboy magazines, which he used to bribe customs officials.

Acting Honduran President Roberto Micheletti said Costa Rican President Oscar Arias needs a psychologist to address mood swings after the Nobel laureate refused to attend the Jan. 27 of President-elect Porfirio Lobo, according to statements made to HRN radio today.

“I don’t understand that man. He seems to be depressed. He needs psychological attention. He should seek a doctor to help him,” Micheletti told HRN.

Arias told reporters yesterday he will not attend the swearing-in because Micheletti refused to resign to add legitimacy to the government of Lobo. Arias said Lobo appeared “weak” after failing to convince Micheletti to step down.

Latin American countries including Brazil and Argentina have said they don’t recognize the elections held under Micheletti’s de facto government, installed after the June coup that deposed President Manuel Zelaya.

Arias, who won the 1987 Nobel Peace Prize for brokering an end to Cold War-era wars in Central America, helped lay the groundwork for a U.S.-brokered deal aimed at ending the country’s political crisis.

Apparently, Micheletti is still on a high. Honduras’s Congress granted him honorary status as a legislator for life yesterday for seeing the country through a post-coup political crisis and overseeing November elections.

The post office has also released a series of stamps featuring the acting leader (I admit, I couldn’t help but get myself a few), and a local business chamber named him the “first national hero of the 21st century.” Wow. In that case, brace yourself for th 21st century.

The farmers opened fire on employees of the Local Development Fund who were collecting debts and beat their
vehicle with a branding iron and bicycle parts. The May attack took place in Matiguas in northern Nicaragua, an area that has seen growing unrest since President Daniel Ortega’s call last year for indebted farmers to pressure microfinance banks for lower interest rates by holding protests.
“The judicial branch’s position is that the law must be applied to stop the culture of not paying debts,” Larios said in a phone interview today. “There’s an explicit order from the Supreme Court to all judges in the country to strictly apply laws in cases of debt defaulters.”

Indebted farmers have held protests at microfinance banks, Congress and the Supreme Court, sometimes wielding machetes and hurling fireworks, since Ortega called for protests. The former Sandinista revolutionary leader has since backed off a bit from his original cry encouraging indebted poor to protest in front of bank offices. He discouraged them from blocking roadways in a February speech.

A proposal in congress would put a 12 percent roof on interest rates. The Nicaraguan Association of Microfinanciers, which lends $250 million annually to 350,000 poor farmers at rates as high as 20 percent, has said it’s “worried” by the proposal, which would “award” protests by debt defaulters. Congress may vote on the proposal this month.

Ortega’s opponents say he’s supporting a culture of defaulters in Nicaragua, Latin America’s second poorest country.

The foreign ministry later apologized, but maintained its accusation that van Baalen was a meddler for holding a press conference in the capital in which he lambasted a  Supreme Court ruling, which was executed by Sandinista judges like a guerrilla ambush, to open the way for President Daniel Ortega to seek reelection.

There is some debate over how best to translate “paisucho”, the title Kautz gave Holland. Translations range from “shitty country” to “two-bit country” to my translation of choice.

Van Baalen, a highly photogenic bureacrat who insists politics is more like rugby than tennis,  called Ortega, a revolutionary who was jailed and tortured, a “coward.” A foreign ministry official promptly  asked van Baalen to leave the country.

Van Baalen’s visit made for great entertainment in a country where going to the stadium to drink $0.75 beers while watching potbellied pro baseball players drop fly balls is about as showbiz as it gets.  It was also a nice exercise in free speech before a leader whose supporters tend to mob rush anyone who protest against him.  But a such diplomatic scrums won’t stop Ortega’s push to stay in power. Over the past three decades, he’s charily been tightening his grip on the country’s institutions, including the courts, police and army, and is less reliant on U.S. and European aid thanks to his oil-rich ally’s 21st century revolution.

The center, a nonprofit democracy watchdog founded by former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, expressed concern that the country’s political crisis could undermine November 29 elections.

Talks to end the Central American country’s four-month crisis failed yesterday on the de facto government’s refusal to restore Zelaya to power.

The Supreme Court ordered Zelaya’s arrest in a sealed indictment in late June after ruling his push to rewrite the constitution was illegal. Soldiers arrested him and sent him to Costa Rica on a plane in his pajamas.

He snuck back into the country more than a month ago and took refuge in the Brazilian embassy, which he’s used as a base to pressure the acting government to restore him.

The acting government closed two opposition media outlets and suspended constitutional rights for three weeks during the electoral campaign as part of a crackdown on protests following Zelaya’s Sept. 21 return.

The United States, European Union and Latin American countries may not recognize Nov. 29 elections if Zelaya isn’t restored first. The United Nations and Organization of American States have threatened to not send observers to monitor the vote.

“The irregular situation Honduras is living could impair electoral rights of competing candidates and voting citizens,” the center said.

Still, backers of the acting government say the candidates for the Nov. 29 elections were already selected in primaries months before the June 28 coup. They seek to avoid handing power back to Zelaya and hope the elections will solve the country’s crisis by turning the government’s reigns over to a democratically-elected third party.

The ball is now in the exhausted Zelaya’s court. The acting government of Roberto Micheletti has tamped down protests with curfews and a decree that suspended freedoms including the right to free association, expression and circulation. The world’s threat to not recognize upcoming elections hasn’t yet been enough to sway Micheletti to even restart talks with Zelaya, let alone restore him.

Most likely scenario: Micheletti waits until after the elections to restore Zelaya.