A green light to transform Ecuador

By Weekly Archive On Nov 20, 2007

By
electing a Constituent Assembly on Sept. 30, Ecuadoreans gave
President Rafael Correa an ample majority, with which he has carte
blanche to change the rules of the political-economic game. Although
badly defeated at the polls, the right immediately stood on war
footing to oppose the official project: a regulated economy, social
redistribution, a participative democracy, regional integration,
"21st-Century socialism". But the winds of change are
blowing throughout the region.

By
Hernando Calvo Ospina

"Now
is the beginning of the challenge of change," says Rocío
Peralbo, a social communicator and well-known human rights militant.
"All the conditions are favorable. We won’t have anyone else to
blame if we fail."

The
history of Ecuador had not seen a triumph as overwhelming as that
obtained by the Alianza País movement on Sept. 30.

Click to continue reading …

Despite
the hostility from the right, the banks, the media and the United
States…

A
green light to transform Ecuador

By
Hernando Calvo Ospina Read Spanish Version

The
history of Ecuador had not seen a triumph as overwhelming as that
obtained by the Alianza País movement on Sept. 30. That day,
the people who must draft a new Constitution were elected. Seventy
percent of the voters placed their trust on the candidates who share
the project with President Rafael Correa Delgado. With 80
representatives out of 130, they will have an absolute majority in
the Constituent Assembly. Therefore, the chief of state can now
"re-found the Republic" and activate a model of development
that will break away from neoliberalism.

Alianza
País began as a project in late 2005 "not as a group on
enlightened people but as a group that fed from the struggles and
efforts of many social and political sectors," says former
Energy and Mines Minister and future president of the Constituent
Assembly Alberto Acosta. In the November 2006 elections the movement
took Correa, an economist and educator, to the presidency. "We
went from being specialists in protest to enacting the proposal. With
the presidency, we had to begin to build."

In his
simple office in Carondelet Palace, a colonial-type building that is
the seat of government, President Correa states: "We have begun
a ‘Citizens Revolution’ that must take us to radical, deep and swift
changes of the structures of this country, because the current ones
don’t work."

Taxi
drivers, newspaper vendors, bootblacks, officer workers — all of
them have faith in the project led by the president. Ecuador is a
country that has had eight presidents in 10 years; most of its
citizens do not trust Congress, which they consider incompetent and
corrupt. Aware of the Congress’ discredit, Alianza País did
not submit any candidates to the latest legislative elections,
choosing to put all its bets on the Constituent Assembly.

The
results for the Constituent Assembly were a decisive rejection of
"partidocracy," as President Correa calls that parties that
dominated the political scene. The vote reflected the collapse of
those who have really been fiefdoms, groups directed by strongmen
without ideological support. Monsignor Eugenio Arellano, who was born
in Spain, has lived in Ecuador for more than 30 years, "always
very close to the people." For that reason, he says he knows
"what 90 percent of the inhabitants think."

"This
new government has conveyed a very big hope to the people: to
radically improve their living conditions." He says the
Ecuadorean Church has taken a position: "We must support,
accompany, become spokesmen for that hope." But, as the popular
saying goes, "the road twists like a snake."

Ecuador
is estimated to have 13 million inhabitants. The National Institute
of Statistics and Census (INEC) says that in 2006 12.9 percent of the
citizens did not have $1.06 a day to cover their nutritional
requirements and thus landed in the group of "indigents."
The average percentage of people who live in chronic poverty is 38.3.
Sixty percent of the people are underemployed. According to the same
source, inequality is enormous: the wealthiest sector’s consumption
level is 35.5 percent; the poorest sector’s is 1.9 percent.
Twenty-six percent of the families borrowed money to pay for medical
care, buy food, pay for education, etc.

The
immediate source of resources for the execution of the development
projects espoused by President Correa is oil. Ecuador is the
fifth-largest oil producer in Latin America. The oil history in this
country has been a bit peculiar.

A coup
d’état was carried out in 1972 by "nationalist army
officers conscious of sovereignty and homeland," says Vice Adm.
Gustavo Jarrín, at the time the Minister for Natural and
Energy Resources. Oil exploitation, which at the time was in the
hands of U.S. companies, was taken over by the State. Several foreign
companies left, others accepted the officers’ conditions, including
the fact that exploitation contracts would thereafter last 20 years,
not 50.

In 1973,
Ecuador joined the Organization of Oil-Producing Countries (OPEC) and
the United States suspended its military aid. Oil-derived revenues
changed radically: the State began to receive 90 percent, instead of
about 5 percent. The economy entered its golden age.

As
Jarrín remembers it, the democratic system was reestablished
in 1978, when the center-left candidate, Jaime Roldós, won the
presidency. He died in a strange airplane accident on May 24, 1981.
And in less than 30 years, the situation was reversed: 80 percent of
the oil revenues went to the transnational corporations. "In
several instances, the land ceded to the oil companies included
churches and people’s parks," Jarrín says.

Incredible,
but legal," Acosta confirms. The Constitution said so: "Freedom
of private investment." Acosta, Energy minister in Correa’s
first Cabinet, saw the impossibility of changing things within the
current legislation. So, he resigned in June to lead the campaign for
the Constituent Assembly. "The oil has not been a guarantee of
development for Ecuador, even though it was a basic element of the
economy."

In fact,
the populations with the highest levels of poverty and cancer are in
the oil-producing provinces. "The Amazonian jungle was destroyed
and two native populations were wiped out by the actions of the
transnational corporations (which acted like a demolition crew) and
by the lack of dignity of our governments," Acosta says.

President
Correa is intent on recovering the oil resources. As in Venezuela and
Bolivia, foreign investors will be welcome if they hew to the
national interests, "but an unbridled commercial opening will be
rejected," Acosta says. "No country that behaved like that
has been successful; to the contrary, it lost a lot."

Another
strategic task is to seek regional sovereignty. "We have to bury
that vision of opening up to the empire [the United States] and
closing down to our neighbors. We have to fight for Latin American
integration," Correa says. When asked what his role is in all
that, the president answers: "I am just another ‘laborer,’
alongside presidents Hugo Chávez and Evo Morales. Although we
can also count on the presidents of Brazil and Argentina, who are
also in the same spirit."

Several
concrete facts demonstrate that it is not a simple intention. For
example, in August, Quito and Caracas signed an accord on energy
integration that involves the construction of a refinery in Manabí,
Ecuador. That facility will make it unnecessary for Ecuador to export
its crude oil at the price set by the multinationals and import it
refined, at the world market price.

"Integration
is a social characteristic of the 21st Century," the president
continues. "It is necessary and unavoidable. Perhaps many people
don’t realize it, but we are going through an extraordinary moment in
this part of the world. We must contribute to build the Grand
Homeland that was Simón Bolívar’s dream." As can
be imagined, this new discourse has not made conservative circles
leap with joy.

Jorge
Ortiz, a star journalist in the political programs on the
Teleamazonas channel, has little doubt about the trajectory President
Correa’s project may take: "One of the greatest possibilities is
that he will choose the ‘Chavist’ economic model, because he has
already copied the invention of 21st-Century socialism, something
nobody understands."

The most
used technique to attack President Correa is to compare him with his
counterpart Hugo Chávez. It is not gratuitous. The Ecuadorean
press has for years stressed that the Venezuelan is a ‘demon,’ a
‘madman,’ a ‘communist’ who has impoverished and divided his people.
There is no need for structural changes, Ortiz says. "Why not
continue with the economic model that we had if it worked? It only
requires strengthening."

In many
of the interviews the president has given, the past does not exist.
It seems like the country’s problems began on Jan. 15, 2007,
inauguration day. It is clear that the objective of some journalists
is to back the president against the wall. But he disarms them with
his academic training, an excellent memory and up-to-date
information. He shows them they are deliberately lying, that they
play with figures and facts. He drives them to despair. And they
press on.

Ortiz
maintains that the press acts toward President Correa as it did with
the previous presidents. "The difference is that the others
respected the criticism, while this man is viscerally intolerant,"
Ortiz says. "But his behavior is not visceral but cerebral,
because he needs to discredit the role of the press to shirk the
criticism and be able to destroy the existing democratic system."

Without
being a "Correist," Rodrigo Santillán, former
president of the National Journalists Guild and president of the
guild’s Court of Honor, recognizes that from the moment that Correa
"began to talk about the need for changes in the nation’s
structures, attacks and insults rained from the most important means
of communication."

Santillán
says he felt ashamed "because two journalists who publicly
insulted the president [during press conferences] were not taken
before the Court of Honor but turned into heroes." The
aggressiveness of one journalist was such that the president’s
security escorts had to remove him from the place.

Ecuador
does not have public radio or television, a situation that the
president plans to remedy. Meanwhile, every Saturday, the president
travels to a different city and delivers to the people "a state
of accounts." On every occasion, he invites two or three
journalists to question him as a panel.

Rocío
Peralbo says that, for the first time, communicators from alternative
and provincial media are taken into account, "and that helped
increase the unease toward the president." Correa’s answer has
been clear: "We are democratizing information. We have decided
not to give more privileges to the usual privileged [journalists.]"

Earlier
this year, while looking away from the relationship between the press
and economic powers, in coordination with the principal
communications media in Ecuador, some international organizations
that advocate freedom of the press protested against the president’s
decision not to grant interviews to specific journalists.

Again,
the president spoke concretely: "If they have insulted me and
manipulated my words, as a person and president I exercise my freedom
of expression to tell them that I will no longer [grant them
interviews] in the name of freedom of the press."

Another
reason for annoyance, according to former minister Acosta, is that
for the first time a government "does not have an incestuous
relationship with the press. Although we are not the only country in
the world where this happens, it has been routine to see media owners
be appointed members of the Defense Board as a reward."

Six of
the seven Ecuadorean television channels are dominated by banking
groups or dependent from financial clans. It is not difficult,
therefore, to mistake freedom of expression for freedom of business.
Bishop Arellano says that "the social class formed by 100 or so
families, the same class that has held de facto power, has created
public opinion and generated a kind of social philosophy to its own
advantage, inasmuch as it owns the mass information media."

"Democracy
is good," the president says,"until the danger arises that
it will impinge on the interests of the oligarchical sector; until a
government attempts to redistribute the nation’s wealth. At that
moment, the press becomes aggressive. Therefore, the great
communications media and the journalists are not responsible for the
country’s ills but have contributed a lot to them."

For his
part, Santillán "knows" that the U.S. Embassy in
Quito "acts discreetly, but it acts. It increased its flirtation
with the great media, and they are happy. Soon, the campaign of
demonization against the president will become massive. It will be
the first step toward an attempt to destabilize [the government.]"

Seen
from Washington, the determination of the Ecuadorean government could
become insubordination. "We hope that the United States, as well
as the European Union or any other country, will respect us, and that
no nation will try to dictate the policies we need to follow or
attempt any kind of intervention" the president says.

More
than an action by the United States against the current government,
what’s most worrisome is the internal war in Colombia. In addition to
the estimated half-million Colombians who live permanently in Ecuador
(hundreds of thousands of them displaced by the war), hundreds arrive
daily seeking temporary refuge. The social problems on the border
occasionally heat up, although this government and its Armed Forces
have acted cautiously and humanely.

Ever
since Correa assumed the presidency, he has said he will not get
involved in that civil war and that he will not consider the
Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (the guerrilla group known as
FARC) as a terrorist group. He has repeated that his government is
ready to contribute to the search of a peaceful solution to the
conflict. But he continues to say categorically that "the Plan
Colombia, implemented by Bogota and Washington, is militaristic and
violent and has not served to solve the grave situation but to worsen
it."

President
Correa not only has asked his Colombian counterpart Alvaro Uribe not
to carry out the fumigation of coca plantations near the border but
also has denounced him to the world and has warned that he would take
the case to international courts. Government and independent
commissions have recognized the grave effects that those poisons have
on humans, water, animals and plants. "Colombia is a brother
country, but we must limit the Plan Colombia," he says.

The
preceding is already grave. There is some concern that the Colombian
government will agree to become Washington’s Trojan horse, to assist
in an attempt to destabilize the Ecuadorean government. We mustn’t
forget — and this is public knowledge — that on several occasions
Washington did the same against the government of President Chávez.

If the
government didn’t enjoy an 80-percent approval rate, a coup would
have been attempted a long time ago, some observers say. But Vice
Admiral Jarrín, who remains in contact with military leaders,
assures us that "I have not perceived the slightest intention on
their part to engage in a putschist adventure."

It is
true that the government is gaining sympathy among the men in uniform
by taking measures that benefit the soldiers as citizens. Soldiers
and policemen have been mistreated in their work and lives.Besides,
important projects of national development are being turned over to
the Corps of Engineers, which is something private and foreign
businesses do not like. The president defends the ability of those
professionals but also argues that, logically, part of the money
invested in them will revert to the state.

Until
now, "everything has favored the speculative financial capital,
not the real generators of wealth," the president says. "In
Ecuador, the contradictions have been such that, while the productive
sector — which generates wealth — was in crisis, the financial
sector — which manages the producers — was setting historical
records for revenue."

"The
problem," Correa continues, "is that there is many a
deceitful businessman who does not pay taxes, exploits his workers,
disrespects the environment, etc. They are the ones who fear our
project for a new State, and those who prefer the destabilization of
a government that they cannot dominate."

Journalist
Jorge Ortiz sees the future with pessimism and fears a catastrophe.
"We shall see moments of great confrontations, especially
because President Correa has become a man who generates hatred,
rivalry and division among Ecuadoreans."

Bishop
Arellano proposes another explanation for the coming difficulties.
"That minority of privileged people is intent on interrupting
this life project. For that reason, it will attack, because its
unbounded privileges will be affected. These people are like a baby
removed from his mother’s breast: he cries."

Hernando
Calvo Ospina is a Colombian journalist and writer who lives in
France. This article was first published in Le Monde Diplomatique.