Halting Nicaragua: Truckers wait on a road outside Managua participating in the Nicaraguan transportation strike that has paralyzed the country. As of yesterday, the strike had gone on for seven days.

Mario López | EFE

MANAGUA, Nicaragua – Just as a nationwide transportation strike was finishing a week that has paralyzed the country and crippled the economy, a renewed energy crisis has led to water rationing here and blackouts lasting from three to seven hours daily.

Striking bus drivers and truckers continued yesterday to keep their ignitions turned off despite a government gesture to slash gas prices for motorists in their sector.

Transport sector leaders were expected to sit down yesterday evening with Catholic Cardinal Miguel Obando y Bravo, a well-known negotiator, in talks that could determine if the strike today will enter its second week. Analysts are warning that the strike could escalate into more violence.

But stopped buses and blackouts aren't the only thing paralyzing Nicaragua.

With a government gridlocked by partisan bickering, a judicial system immobilized by striking judges, and a growing lack of confidence among international donors, the opposition is calling on President Daniel Ortega to either assume his responsibility to resolve the worsening crisis, or resign.

“If he can't (resolve the crisis) he should resign from his post and hand it over to his vice president,” liberal opposition leader Eduardo Montealegre said Thursday. “And if he doesn't want to, we should hold a referendum together with the municipal elections next November to see if the country considers him capable of continuing in government.”

Montealegre, who lost to Ortega in the 2006 presidential elections and is now running for mayor of Managua for the Liberal Constitutional Party (PLC), called Ortega's 16 months in office “disastrous,” leading to 22 percent accumulated inflation, runaway price increases for the cost of living, and massive job loss due to his “inability to generate an adequate climate for private investment.”

Read this Friday's Nica Times for more on Nicaragua's crisis.