Leftist Correa claims victory in Ecuador

By Cristóbal Cavazos

At press time, with official tallies showing he had won 57
percent of the vote, Rafael Correa of the left-leaning
Alianza País party claimed victory over right-wing
millionaire Alvaro Noboa in the Nov. 26 run-off election for
the presidency of Ecuador.

“We accept this victory with dignity and humility,”
Correa said. “We are just instruments of the power of the
people. With my ascension to power comes the people’s
ascension into power.”

Big crowds turned out in Quito and elsewhere to celebrate.

Kintto Lucas, writing in Tintají magazine, said, “It is
time to form a great social and political front in support
of Rafael Correa and the changes Ecuador so urgently
needs.”

Correa, 43, is an economist who once served as economics
minister under the current president, Alfredo Palacio. Many
feel Correa was forced to resign his previous post under
pressure from the International Monetary Fund. The IMF, they
say, disliked his strong defense of meeting human needs and
the preservation of the public sector, and his rejection of
a “free trade” agreement with the United States.

Meanwhile, Noboa, a millionaire banana tycoon and
Ecuador’s richest man, has charged election fraud and
plans to request a recount. However, the Organization of
American States, which monitored the election, said
balloting took place normally and in an exemplary way.

Ecuador’s next president will have to contend with a
powerful grassroots social movement. This anti-capitalist,
continent-wide, workers’ and indigenous peoples’
movement is comprised of groups such as the indigenous
movement Pachakutik, which has allowed but three presidents
to serve out full terms since 1979.

In April 2005 Alfredo Palacio took over power from Lucio
Gutierrez, one of three consecutive presidents who have
recently had to resign because of popular protests against
neoliberal policies. Ecuador has had eight presidents in 10
years.

Class antagonisms, mass emigration, recession, press
censorship, high inflation, oil workers’ strikes, racial
strife and the replacement of the national currency with the
U.S. dollar have made Ecuador the scene of political
turmoil.

With over 80 percent of Ecuadorians living in poverty and
much of Ecuador’s resources in foreign hands, attempts at
wide-scale privatization of public social services and the
planned free trade agreement with the U.S. have met resolute
opposition. Successive governments supporting these
positions have been forced on many occasions to back down or
cede ground.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, a supporter of Correa,
said, “After many years of divisive social and economic
policy, policy that has provoked the tragedy of despair, of
wide-scale emigration — hope could not be robbed from us,
for [today] we have overcome.”

Correa ran a campaign on a platform of Ecuadorian
sovereignty and regional integration. His Alianza País
party, which has signed an alliance with the Ecuadorian
Socialist Party, has called Ecuador’s highly unpopular
Congress a “cloaca,” or sewer, and has called for the
writing of a new constitution “more in tune with the
times.”

He has vowed to shut down the U.S. military base in Manta
and has been quoted saying, “We can negotiate with the
U.S. about a base in Manta, and if they let us put a
military base in Miami, if there is no problem, we’ll
accept.”

Another of his campaign themes has called for a revision of
Ecuador’s foreign dominated oil industry, saying, “Many
of the oil contracts are a true entrapment for the country.
Of every five barrels of oil that the multinationals
produce, they leave only one for the state and take four.
.. That is absolutely unacceptable. We’re going to revise
and renegotiate the contracts.”

Correa has invited the Ecuadorian citizenry to “unite with
this change ... to work to overcome 20 years of the long,
sad neoliberalist night that has damaged us so.”

Indeed it is Correa who must unite with and represent the
powerful Ecuadorian social movements and the people’s will
if he is to avoid a dark fate similar to his predecessors.
For as Bolivia’s Evo Morales has said of Latin America,
“The time of dignity for the people has come.”