Ecuador: The Popular Rebellion Against the “Partidocracia” and the Neo-Liberal State

[Judi Lynn]

Ecuador: The Popular Rebellion Against the “Partidocracia” and the Neo-Liberal State
A CENSA Strategic Study
By Roger Burbach

On January 15, 2007, Rafael Correa assumed the presidency of Ecuador after running against Alvaro Noboa, the richest man in Ecuador who’s company the Noboa Group is on the Fortune 500 list. Correa, who held no prior elective office, did not represent any political party. After his name on the ballot were the words “Alianza Pais” meaning Country Alliance, a name chosen when he announced his candidacy. Alianza Pais endorsed no candidates who ran for election in the country’s unicameral Congress.

Noboa represented what is called the “Partidocracia,” a system of government run by factious political parties dominated by oligarchs who pull the strings on a corrupt state that includes Congress, the Supreme Court, and a number of “autonomous” agencies, such as the Federal Electoral Tribunal. Even Michel Camdesseus, the former director of the International Monetary Fund, once commented that Ecuador is characterized “by an incestuous relation between bankers, political-financial pressure groups and corrupt government officials.” (1)

A renovated bourgeoisie/oligarchy consolidated itself during the oil boom of the 1970s when the petroleum corporations carved out their respective drilling enclaves in the Ecuadorian jungle, or the “Oriente”. Led by Texaco the companies crudely exploited the tropical rain forest where tribal Indians had lived for millennia, strewing it with contamination from thousands of seismic grids, oil wells and open waste pits. Like the sixteenth century Spanish conquest the Ecuadorian highlands, the corporations tore the indigenous communities apart through displacement, disease, corruption and the harsh exploitation of the workers, many of whom were brought in from the highlands because most of the rain forest Indians of the region refused to work for the corporations. (2)

With the rise of the Washington Consensus in the early 1980s the new oligarchy moved to the right and a Partidocracia emerged that began to adopt the neoliberal agenda, cutting social programs and privatizing state enterprises. The total sellout of Ecuador to neo-liberalism came in 2000 when the US dollar became the country’s official currency. With the Pentagon, the government assumed a particularly servile relationship, signing a treaty in 1999 for the establishment of the largest US military base on the Pacific Coast in South America. It is used as a center for sophisticated US intelligence gathering in the southern continent and Central America, and for coordinating the counterinsurgency war against leftist guerrillas in neighboring Colombia.

Rafael Correa is a political phenomenon who came out of nowhere, a university professor in economics who served as Minister of Economy for two months under the previous government until he was removed for trying to overturn neo-liberal policies. His professorial background belies his tremendous charisma, which enabled him to galvanize the electorate. His election is the second round was backed by the indigenous and social movements, several small political parties on the left and a vast unorganized popular mass called the Forajidos, an Ecuadorian term that means outlaws, or bandits who rebel against the established system. The central demand of this broad popular movement is for a Constituent Assembly to draft a new constitution that breaks up the current dysfunctional state, ends the reign of the partidocracia, refounds the country as a plurinational, participatory democracy, reclaims Ecuadorian sovereignty and uses the state to create social and economic organizations that benefit the people, not the oligarchy.

More:
http://globalalternatives.org/rebellion_against_the_partidocracia

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San Rafael Falls, Ecuador

Ecuador: New progressive constitution adopted
Friday, October 10, 2008 - 11:00
By Duroyan Fertl
On September 28, 65% of Ecuadorian voters approved the country's 20th and newest constitution — strengthening the mandate of left-wing President Rafael Correa.

Correa was elected in 2006, promising a "citizen's revolution" to build a "socialism of the 21st century" in order to overcome the corruption rife in Ecuador, and to end the poverty that afflicts over half of the small Andean country's 14 million inhabitants.

The drafting of the new constitution, by an elected constituent assembly, involved significant public participation.

More than 3500 organisations presented proposals to the assembly, and thousands of public forums were held in schools, universities and communities across the country in the lead-up to the referendum.

Progressive content

Included in the 444 final articles are the right to free universal health care; free education up to university level; equal rights for same-sex relationships; a universal right to water and prohibition of its privatisation; and women's control over their reproductive rights.

The last article opens a legal avenue for abortion for the first time in the heavily Catholic nation.

The constitution also calls for the eradication of inequality and discrimination towards women, and proposes putting a value on unpaid domestic work.

It guarantees the right to quality housing, regardless of means, and provides for the redistribution of large unused landholdings — which led to armed peasants occupying land in at least four provinces, including a number of natural reserves, immediately after the referendum victory.

The government has declared these occupations illegal, claiming that they are based on a misunderstanding of the constitution and that some of them are on environmentally sensitive land.

The response nonetheless demonstrates the willingness of the Ecuadorian people to take matters into their own hands when it is seen as necessary.

A key concept in the constitution is the indigenous concept of sumak kawsay (good living), which urges living in harmony with the individual, society and nature. The charter also elevates indigenous languages to the status of official national languages for the first time in a country where more than 40% of the population are indigenous.

The constitution also declares Ecuador to be a "pacifist state", calling for universal disarmament, condemning weapons of mass destruction and outlawing foreign military bases in Ecuadorian territory.

This is a further step towards making Correa's oft-repeated promise to expel the unpopular US airbase at Manta, whose lease expires next year, a reality.

The constitution also guarantees universal social security and the permanent right to food security. It calls for the establishment of a sustainable economic system, founded on the equitable distribution of wealth and the means of production.

Perhaps one of the most notable features is the granting of legal rights to nature, making it the constitutional duty of both government and citizens to protect the environment and natural biodiversity, to prosecute those who harm it, and to repair it when damaged.

More:
http://www.greenleft.org.au/node/40408