Opposition student organizations reject the reform to Law 89, Law of Autonomy of Higher Education Institutions, which gives more control to the National Council of Universities (CNU) over the country’s higher education centers, leaving it out of is the Central American University (UCA) and suffering the dispossession of 6% constitutional.
“Higher education has suffered attacks in recent months by this regime that seeks to hegemonize, control academic freedom and freedom of thought of the young people of this Jesuit house of studies, for being one of the bastions of the civic struggle in Nicaragua since 2018; but, in addition, its campus, shortly before the pandemic, was the only safe place where students could protest against government authoritarianism, ”say the opposition student organizations Alianza Universitaria Nicaragüense (AUN), Student Movement of the National Agrarian University (UNA ) and the Student Movement April 19 (ME19A).
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The proposal was approved this Thursday, March 31, with 75 votes from the Ortega deputies, 0 votes against, 14 abstentions and two present. The Sandinista steamroller argued that this amendment to the Law is to strengthen the higher education subsystem and the CNU as its governing body.
With the reform of the legislation, the institutions of higher education are defined in accordance with the law “as well as the functions of the CNU in relation to the regulation of higher education, taking into account the human development policy, among others.”
“We stand in solidarity with the student community, teachers and authorities of the Central American University, who are currently uncertain about finishing their studies with exclusion and budget cuts,” the organizations add.
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They affirm that as young university students “we demand respect for university autonomy, academic freedom and the university as a space of freedom and creation of thought, criticism and contribution to society, as established in article 125 of our constitution.”
In the proposal to reform Law 89, Law of Autonomy of Higher Education Institutions, article 56 states that the state universities that make up the National Council of Universities (CNU) as the governing body of the higher education subsystem are the following :
National Autonomous University of Nicaragua, León (UNAN-León), National Autonomous University of Nicaragua, Managua (UNAN-Managua), National University of Engineering (UNI) 1.4. National Agrarian University (UNA), National Polytechnic University (UNP) —formerly UPOLI—.
