MANAGUA, Nicaragua – Nicaragua’s Sandinistas marked the 28th anniversary of their 1979 revolution on Thursday and this year’s celebrations were particularly sweet _ the leftist party is back in power and surrounded by allies.

President Daniel Ortega, elected for a second term in November, was joined by the presidents of Panama and Honduras, as well as Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez, who has supplied Nicaragua with oil and other fuels.

“Unity will make us free,” Chavez said. “The empire has always maintained its plans to keep us divided, and thus weak and dominated,” he added, referring to the United States.

Ortega called the anniversary “a glorious date,” saying many still “fight for liberty, justice, sovereignty and against imperial domination.”

The celebration was to include the formal rollout of Ortega’s controversial “people’s councils,” described by the Sandinistas as an exercise in direct democracy. Some, however, fear they will resemble the Sandinista Defense Committees that operated in the 1980s and were accused of spying on and intimidating citizens.

The Sandinistas toppled dictator Anastasio Somoza on July 19, 1979, and installed Ortega as president. The Sandinista armed forces later battled U.S.-backed Contra rebels in a war that claimed an estimated 50,000 lives.

A service of the Associated Press(AP)