Nicaraguan election tribunal stands for now: Ortega

Nicaragua's President Daniel Ortega gestures during celebrations of his third year of government in Managua January 9, 2010.

MANAGUA (Reuters) - Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega issued a decree on Saturday that could extend the terms of electoral officials supporting his controversial bid for re-election in 2011, a move the opposition says oversteps his powers.

Nicaragua's Congress is charged with appointing electoral authorities, but lawmakers -- split between backers of Ortega's leftist Sandinista party and right-wing opponents -- have been unable to agree on whether the officials should be replaced.

Ortega's decree stipulates that the current electoral tribunal will remain in place if Congress fails to decide by February who should sit on the panel.

The electoral authorities supported a Supreme Court decision last October that would allow Ortega -- a former guerrilla and U.S. foe -- to run again for president.

"To avoid a power vacuum, the terms (of the officials) will be extended ... if Congress does not name new authorities or ratify the existing (authorities)," Ortega said at an event late on Saturday.

Opposition leaders said Ortega's decree was usurping legislative powers. The U.S. State Department has warned that the push for re-election could threaten democracy in the Central American country.

"He cannot act like a supreme power and pass over the law," said Eduardo Montealegre, who lost the 2006 presidential election to Ortega. "He wants a dictatorship in Nicaragua," Montealegre, a Liberal Party congressman, told local television.

Latin America is wrestling with the issue of presidential term limits as leftists like Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez seek to extend their time in power. Central America is caught in its worst political crisis in decades after Honduras toppled President Manuel Zelaya amid accusations he was seeking to stay in office.

Ortega, whose Cold War-era Sandinista rebels fought U.S.-backed government forces in a civil war, said last July that Nicaragua should lift term limits.

Ortega first took power after the 1979 revolution and was formally elected president in 1984. After his Sandinista party lost power in 1990, the opposition banned consecutive re-election.

He was re-elected in 2007, but presidents are barred from serving more than two terms.

(Writing by Mica Rosenberg; Editing by Peter Cooney)