MANAGUA, Nicaragua -- The scene outside the U.S. Embassy last week illustrated fraying tensions in this capital where the Sandinista government has been maneuvering for reelection: Agitated pro-government youths hurled fireworks, rocks and eggs at the embassy grounds and shouted ``Death to the Yankees! Death to the empire!''

The following day, a Sandinista mob surrounded a university campus where U.S. Ambassador Robert Callahan was attending a cultural festival, forcing him to flee with the help of riot police. The Sandinistas want Callahan's ouster, and went so far as to declare him persona non grata in a theatrical ``popular assembly'' held in front of the embassy Thursday evening.

The United States has been increasingly voicing concerns about the state of Nicaraguan democracy under President Daniel Ortega, and the opposition is complaining that the president is undermining Nicaragua's democracy in his quest to remain in power.

The reason? On Oct. 19, six Sandinistas on Nicaragua's Supreme Court scrapped a constitutional term limit, a move that would allow the president to run for office in 2011 elections. The seven opposition judges insist they were not consulted before the Sandinista jurists ruled.

The opposition magistrates -- including court president Manuel Martínez -- issued an official Supreme Court declaration Oct. 28 accusing the Sandinista judges of illegally conspiring against the country's democratic and institutional order.

The declaration said the Supreme Court does not have the authority to tinker with the constitution, a task which only the National Assembly is authorized to do.

`WE ARE WORRIED'

``From our point of view, the Supreme Court acted improperly and with unusual speed, in secret, with the participation of judges from only one political movement and without any public debate or discussion,'' Callahan told the Nicaraguan-American Chamber of Commerce during a luncheon last week. ``We are worried.''

Sandinistas argue that nonconsecutive term limits prejudiced the people's right to elect whomever they want.

``The power is in the hands of the people, and that is not something that the oligarchs, the traitors and the imperialists like,'' Ortega said during a nationally televised address Oct. 20. He cast his political opponents as ``residual garbage'' who should be thrown in jail.

For Sandinistas here, the comments by the U.S. ambassador are part of the United States' legacy of continual interventionist policies toward Nicaragua.

During the first Sandinista government of the 1980s, the United States funneled money to the contras, who fought to overthrow the leftist regime.

Callahan told business leaders that Sandinista magistrates' decision to overturn the constitutional ban on consecutive presidential reelection cast doubts on Nicaragua's democratic procedure.

He would not speculate what, if any, measures Washington would take in response to the judicial power play, or to the vandalism of embassy property. Earlier this year, the U.S. government suspended $64 million in development aid to Nicaragua for similar concerns over the Sandinistas' commitment to democracy.

In Washington, Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, echoed the concerns. He said Ortega's ``manipulation'' of the Supreme Court ``reeks of the authoritarianism of the past'' and that the president appeared to be taking his cues from ``the coup-plotters in Honduras.''

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