First Years
The new government established a consultative assembly, the Council of State, on 4 May 1980. The council could approve laws submitted to it by the junta or initiate its own legislation. The junta had the right of veto over council-initiated legislation, and retained control over much of the budget. Although its powers were limited, the council was not a rubber stamp and often amended legislation given it by the junta.
From late 1979 through 1980, United States president Carter's administration made efforts to work with the new Nicaraguan government. However, when president Ronald Reagan took office in January 1981, the United States government launched a campaign to isolate the Sandinista government. On 23 January, the Reagan administration suspended all United States aid to Nicaragua. Later that year, the Reagan administration authorised support for groups trying to overthrow the Nicaraguan government. The U.S. claimed that Nicaragua, with assistance from Cuba and the Soviet Union, was supplying arms to guerrillas in El Salvador. The Nicaraguan government denied the United States' allegations and charged the United States with leading an international campaign against it.
Read more about this topic: Nicaraguan Revolution
Famous quotes containing the word years:
“As the twentieth century ends, commerce and culture are coming closer together. The distinction between life and art has been eroded by fifty years of enhanced communications, ever-improving reproduction technologies and increasing wealth.”
—Stephen Bayley (b. 1951)
“Perfect present has no existence in our consciousness. As I said years ago in Erewhon, it lives but upon the sufferance of past and future. We are like men standing on a narrow footbridge over a railway. We can watch the future hurrying like an express train towards us, and then hurrying into the past, but in the narrow strip of present we cannot see it. Strange that that which is the most essential to our consciousness should be exactly that of which we are least definitely conscious.”
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