Nicaraguan opposition legislators are using their command of the budget as ammo in an attempt to shoot down President Daniel Ortega's attempt to establish controversial neighborhood groups to be overseen by himself.

Despite strong disapproval from the legislative National Assembly, Ortega and his wife, Rosario Murillo, continue to move forward with plans to implement their version of “direct democracy” by installing their polemic Councils of Citizen Power (CPCs) (NT, Nov. 30).

Ortega claims the citizen networks, known as Councils of Citizen Power (CPC), are meant to craft a direct democracy to effectively distribute subsidized food, target crime and illiteracy, and manage trash. But critics say Ortega plans to use the councils to wield his own and his party's power by undermining the National Assembly and municipalities in favor of throwbacks to councils Ortega used as president during the 1980s war.

Some opposition legislators said if Ortega continues to go around the legislature, they'll sit on the purse and withhold support for the impecunious country's $1.5 billion 2008 budget.

“We won't agree to approve the budget if that's how it's going to be,” said PLC legislator Pedro Matus González, who said he feared that in Nicaragua the line between the state and Ortega's Sandinista party is “disappearing.” González and other opposition legislators formed last week a bloc against Ortega's councils, which they dubbed “The Bloc Against Dictatorship,” and are organizing a protest to be held the beginning of January.

Read more about the executive-legislative power struggle in Friday's print edition