Hundreds of students lobbed homemade bombs at Congress on Tuesday to protest government plans to cut university funding, as pro-and anti-government demonstrators prepared to square off at the weekend in Managua.
The explosives caused only minor damage when they were thrown at the building that houses the Nicaraguan Congress, said lawmaker Francisco Aguirre.
But Aguirre said that if they had been used in a street demonstration, which both the ruling party and opposition groups are planning for Saturday, "they certainly could kill a person."
Students on Tuesday marched to the legislature building to oppose government plans to cut funding for public universities as set out in the draft budget for 2010, said National Universities Council leader Telemaco Talavera.
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'The government thinks it not only owns the streets but the whole country' Meanwhile, groups for and against President Daniel Ortega traded insults and claimed the right to demonstrate this weekend on the same stretch of road where thousands of people will square off with the likelihood of violence.
Pro-government groups said they will muster 100 000 people in support of the leftist president, while opposition leaders speak of "sinister plots" by authorities to arm their followers with rocks, clubs and bombs so they can use them against dissenters.
The tension has been building since the ruling Sandinista party's crushing win in mayoral elections a year ago, which the opposition charged were riddled with fraud, and a Supreme Court ruling last month that cleared the way for Ortega to seek reelection in 2011.
Sandinista union leader Gustavo Porras said everybody has the right to demonstrate, as long as it is clear that the opposition's "will be a march of thieves and corrupt people."
Opposition groups have complained to authorities for allowing the two demonstrations to take place Saturday at the same time and place, while business leaders have appealed to Ortega to personally ask that his followers change the timing of their march.
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