Fausta's Blog

American and Latin American Politics, Society, and Culture

November 2, 2017 By Fausta

Ecuador: Moreno no longer head of his party

Ecuador’s President Lenín Moreno has been removed from his post of leader of the governing Alianza País party by the party’s national leadership committee.

Mr Moreno’s position as the country’s president is not affected but the committee said that Alianza País would now be led by the former foreign minister, Ricardo Patiño.

Supporters of Mr Moreno said they did not accept the committee’s decision.

It has to do with Rafael Correa,

Moreno, who is seeking presidential term limits via a referendum to revise the constitution, has sidelined another top Correa ally from the vice presidency, and is overseeing a corruption probe that has ensnared former high-level officials.

Allegedly, Correa expected to run for president again after Lenín served one term.

But Lenín has other plans, including a proposed referendum,

Such a referendum would, however, defy some of the rules laid down by the previous government headed by Rafael Correa, such as unlimited reelections, capital gains legislation and the restructuring of the Citizen Participation Council, all controversial matters that further divide Ecuadorian society.

Not exactly what Correa had in mind when he left for Belgium.

Share

Filed Under: Ecuador, Fausta's blog, Rafael Correa Tagged With: Lenín Moreno

April 17, 2017 By Fausta

John Batchelor: Ecuador & Argentina discard transparency.

Mary O’Grady was in the Batchelor show discussing how Ecuador & Argentina discard transparency.

Mr. Correa has been president since 2007. He runs the country’s largest media empire and controls the legislature, the judiciary, the top command of the army, and the national police. All members of the CNE have links to his government or his party, the PAIS Alliance. The head of the electoral appeals tribunal is the brother of Mr. Correa’s attorney general.

Mr. Moreno freely used government resources to campaign and played dirty. Fake Lasso ads in which he promised to privatize health care popped up on city buses, though Mr. Lasso had made no such proposal. With government control of more than 20 mass-media organizations, including television and radio stations, newspapers and magazines, Mr. Moreno blanketed the nation with his message. The government often interrupted programming on channels not owned by the state to run campaign spots.

The European Union observed Ecuador’s 2009 presidential election and issued a report critical of Mr. Correa’s use of government resources and power to influence the outcome. This time around the CNE blocked an EU observer mission.

Listen here:

Also don’t miss O’Grady’s column on Venezuela,

Mary Anastasia O'Grady: Hungry Venezuelans Demand Change https://t.co/4drnVzX45Z

— MaryAnastasiaO'Grady (@MaryAnastasiaOG) April 17, 2017

Share

Filed Under: Argentina, Ecuador, Fausta's blog, Rafael Correa Tagged With: Guillermo Lasso, Lenín Moreno

April 7, 2017 By Fausta

Ecuador: Demonstrations on the street while Correa says left’s on the mend

The glass is half-full, and half-empty:

Ecuador’s President Rafael Correa Sees Latin America’s Left on the Mend. ‘There are going to be a lot more triumphs for the left,’ departing leader says after his preferred candidate’s victory

President Rafael Correa has watched one after another of his leftist Latin American allies get impeached, beaten at the polls or excoriated as antidemocratic, as his own government faced growing disenchantment amid an economic downturn.

This week, he hailed a reversal in that trend as Ecuadoreans elected his preferred successor, former Vice President Lenin Moreno, in a tight race against a conservative rival. The outcome, he said, highlighted the left’s resilience at a moment when analysts see the region’s politics moving to the right.

“I think it marks an end to that change,” Mr. Correa said in an interview late Wednesday at the presidential palace. “We’ve won in very adverse conditions.”

while the demonstrators take to the streets and twitter,

¡Increíble Guayaquil! ¡¡Gracias Ecuador!! pic.twitter.com/PJXQvy26iu

— Guillermo Lasso (@LassoGuillermo) April 7, 2017

“The people of Ecuador will NOT be fooled. We want democracy and freedom for all Ecuadorians asking for #RecountNOW”

El pueblo ecuatoriano NO se va a dejar engañar. Queremos democracia y libertad para todos los ecuatorianos que piden #ReconteoYA pic.twitter.com/1jMhLwThV5

— Guillermo Lasso (@LassoGuillermo) April 7, 2017

The CNE says the results are “official and irreversible.”

Share

Filed Under: Ecuador, elections, Fausta's blog, Rafael Correa

March 30, 2017 By Fausta

Ecuador: Leftist mob attacks opposition’s presidential candidate VIDEO

A mob of Lenín Moreno supporters disrupted a soccer game Guillermo Lasso was attending, and attacked attacked Lasso and his family as they left the stadium.

Frances Martel reports,

A leftist mob, some have identified as paid agitators, violently attacked Ecuador’s center-right presidential candidate Guillermo Lasso and his family Tuesday night as they attempted to leave a soccer match in the nation’s capital, Quito.

The mob – reportedly armed with bottles, sticks, stones, and knives – jeered the presidential candidate and his family and injured police detail assigned to escort the family out of Quito’s Atahualpa Olympic Stadium where Ecuador’s national soccer team was facing Colombia’s for a spot in the 2018 FIFA World Cup. The crowd shouted, “out, banker!” at Lasso – whose pre-politics career was in finance – while making noise with vuvuzelas and hurling projectiles at the family.
. . .

“When we left the stadium, Alianza Paz [leftist party] militants began throwing bottles, sticks, and threatened us with knives,” Lasso said in a statement to the press. “All I could do was protect my wife with my body and receive the blows from the objects on my head.”

Lasso tweeted video of the incident,

The video clearly shows violent crowds pelting police officers and the Lasso family while hurling epithets at them. The younger Lasso accuses the government of socialist president Rafael Correa of hiring paid agitators to attack the family.

“My son Santiago narrates what we went through yesterday. The images speak for themselves. We don’t want this Ecuador for our children”

Esto es lo que vivimos ayer narrado por mi hijo Santiago. Las imágenes hablan por sí solas. No queremos este Ecuador para nuestros hijos. pic.twitter.com/LTbHHbQ0SL

— Guillermo Lasso (@LassoGuillermo) March 29, 2017

While the official surveys show Moreno ahead by five percentage points, 16 percent of their respondents said they were undecided.

Correa’s party has a lot riding on this election, as Mary O’Grady noted,

Mr. Moreno is Mr. Correa’s proxy in this election. A Moreno triumph is important if Mr. Correa is to be protected from the wide array of corruption investigations that his opponents are demanding.

Mr. Moreno would also act as a placeholder for Mr. Correa until the 2021 election, as Dmitry Medvedev was for Vladimir Putin from 2008-12. Legalized indefinite re-election would take care of the rest.

Correa vowed to annul the election results if Moreno doesn’t win next Sunday, through a maneuver by which the Ecuadorian Constitution allows him to dissolve the Executive and Judiciary branches and call for new elections.

In-country sources confirmed that OAS election monitors will not be allowed to be present at the electoral board headquarters.

Share

Filed Under: Ecuador, elections, Fausta's blog, Rafael Correa Tagged With: Guillermo Lasso, Lenín Moreno, OAS, Organization of American States

March 10, 2017 By Fausta

Ecuador: DOJ won’t release names of Ecuador officials implicated in Odebrecht case

Jim Wyss reports that the DOJ won’t release names of Ecuador officials implicated in Odebrecht case, despite Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen’s repeated requests:

The U.S. Department of Justice will not provide U.S. lawmakers with the names of Ecuadorian officials who might have been implicated in the sweeping Odebrecht corruption case — as long as the investigation is active.

In a statement Thursday, Miami Republican Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen said the DOJ had denied her Jan. 6 request to make the names public, citing the department’s policy of not discussing “ongoing investigation[s]” or publicly naming “unindicted co-conspirators.”

The request is politically charged, as the South American nation heads into a tight April 2 presidential runoff that will determine the successor of President Rafael Correa and where corruption allegations have taken center stage.

Ecuador’s Attorney General Galo Chiriboga has been tweeting about all the cooperation on the Odebrecht case, including his February 4 meeting with Deputy Assistant Attorney General Bruce Swartz under the Obama administration,

En Washington, nos reunimos con Bruce Swartz, fiscal General adjunto de #EEUU para referirnos al #CasoOdebrecht

— Galo Chiriboga (@Galo_Chiriboga) February 4, 2017

when they signed a cooperation agreement,

Como @FiscaliaEcuador, logramos un acuerdo de colaboración con el Departamento de Justicia de #EEUU #CasoOdebrecht

— Galo Chiriboga (@Galo_Chiriboga) February 4, 2017

Chiriboga tweeted that Swartz did not release names,

El Fiscal General adjunto de #EEUU no entregó a @FiscaliaEcuador nombres sobre #CasoOdebrecht porque señaló que es información reservada

— Galo Chiriboga (@Galo_Chiriboga) February 4, 2017

Rafael Correa doesn’t want to disclose,

In Ecuador, authorities have not provided names about who might be involved. But Correa has said the case was being manipulated by U.S. authorities to try to skew the election, where his hand-picked successor, Lenín Moreno, is running in a tight race against former banker Guillermo Lasso.

UPDATE
Trending at Bad Blue.

Share

Filed Under: corruption, Ecuador, Fausta's blog, Rafael Correa Tagged With: Galo Chiriboga, Odebrecht

February 24, 2017 By Fausta

Ecuador: A reprieve, a runoff

Mac Margolis is enthusiastic,
Ecuador’s Voters Turn Back Latin America’s Pink Tide

So 10 million Ecuadoreans will have a second go at the polls in a runoff April 2. Suddenly, the whiff of competitive democracy in this patch of the Andes, where so-called Bolivarian socialists once called the shots, has voters in a lather. They streamed by the thousands into Quito this week to stand vigil as the National Electoral Council inexplicably drip-fed its tally.

Outside observers saw no foul play in the delay, but the anxiety was understandable. For the last decade, after all, this small and mostly poor Andean nation has lived in the shadow of Rafael Correa, a headstrong populist who ruled with one hand on the balcony and the other on the oil drum. Courting the poor, feeding the bureaucracy, bullying critics and hushing the media — all of these were part of the palace script. The Ecuadoran media watchdog Fundamedios documented 981 attacks on journalists over the last two years. (Correa’s response: Try to dissolve Fundamedios.) And if elections weren’t quite rigged, their rules were crafted to assure three-time President Correa and his ruling Alianza Pais coalition the upper hand.

More importantly, it reflects economic disasters,

In fact, Correa’s errors were merely masked by plenty, including a windfall in oil revenues, which he splashed on social programs and the bottomless bureaucracy. His aura dimmed with the end of the commodities boom, when the slump in oil prices led the way into deep recession in 2016, with only modest growth projected for this year. If once Correa could thumb his nose at foreign creditors — he defaulted on $3.2 billion in sovereign bonds in 2008 — the downturn has forced his hand. Fitch Ratings reported that Ecuador needs some $10.3 billion this year to close its deficits. In five years, the country’s debt burden has swelled from 18 percent of gross domestic product to 40 percent today, Fitch said in a client note on Feb. 14. That’s a hole not even lavish Chinese loans can cover.

I’m cautiously optimistic on the elections, in a “live to fight another day” way.

(h/t JC)

Share

Filed Under: Ecuador, elections, Fausta's blog, Rafael Correa

February 21, 2017 By Fausta

Ecuador: No election results until . . . Thursday? UPDATED

One thing for sure, had Lenín won by a large margin, there would be no wait.

Ecuadoreans are growing impatient at the slow pace of vote counting with the results of the presidential poll delayed until Wednesday or Thursday.

National Electoral Council President Juan Pablo Pozo called on Ecuadoreans to “wait for the results with calm”.

“There are very tight margins to establish whether there will be a second round or not,” he said.

He blamed the delay on “numerical inconsistencies” in 5.5% of the ballots, while he said others were missing signatures from polling station officials.

Carlos Alberto Montaner voices concern on electoral fraud (video in Spanish), since a Lasso could win a second round,

Rafael Correa says he’ll move to Belgium at the end of his term (why Belgium?), but there’s speculation as to whether he’d run again in four years.

UPDATE
Last night’s demonstrations,

“Ecuador awakened after a ten year nightmare”

El Ecuador despertó después de una pesadilla de diez años pic.twitter.com/97pGU7ZWtC

— Emilio Palacio (@PalacioEmilio) February 21, 2017

Share

Filed Under: Ecuador, elections, Fausta's blog, Rafael Correa Tagged With: Guillermo Lasso, Lenín Moreno

February 20, 2017 By Fausta

Ecuador: Runoff unlikely

At The Guardian, Ecuador election: Moreno facing runoff as 40% vote looks out of reach. With almost 90% of votes counted, candidate for incumbent party just short of 40% required for outright victory

With 87% of votes counted early on Monday morning, the national electoral council gave 39.09% to Moreno, who was a former vice-president under the outgoing Rafael Correa, and 28.28% to Lasso, a 61-year-old former banker. For an outright win a candidate needs 40% and a 10-point lead over his nearest rival.

Moreno was already celebrating.

As the WSJ points out,

The election is the first time in a decade that Mr. Correa, who was legally barred from running, wasn’t on the ballot.

The opposition demands a recount,

Control Electoral de CREO informa nuestras cifras:
38.8% Lenin Moreno
30.3% Guillermo Lasso
15.2% Cynthia Viteri.
6.5% Paco Moncayo
RT!

— César Monge Ortega (@CesarMongeO) February 20, 2017

These are 5 things you need to know about Ecuador’s elections.

Share

Filed Under: Ecuador, elections, Fausta's blog, Rafael Correa Tagged With: Guillermo Lasso, Lenín Moreno

  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • …
  • 10
  • Next Page »
Tweets by @Fausta
retirees_raise-2015_300x250

Pages

  • About
  • Email

Meta

  • Register
  • Log in
  • Entries feed
  • Comments feed
  • WordPress.org

Previous Posts

  • Mrs. Maisel goes full Alinsky on Mrs. Schlafly
  • Venezuela: Did the Minister of Defense back out at the last minute?
  • You need to unfriend me
  • Go ahead and Kiss the Girl, if you dare
  • Ashamed

Recent Comments

  • John on Mrs. Maisel goes full Alinsky on Mrs. Schlafly
  • Today’s hot topics: Democrats’ collusion shift, tax-return rift, Venezuela drift, and more! – PoliticalWitchDoctor.com on Venezuela: Did the Minister of Defense back out at the last minute?
  • Today’s hot topics: Democrats’ collusion shift, tax-return rift, Venezuela drift, and more! - AmericanTruthToday on Venezuela: Did the Minister of Defense back out at the last minute?
  • Did Venezuela’s Minister of Defense Back Out At The Last Minute? on Venezuela: Did the Minister of Defense back out at the last minute?
  • Roseanne Not Back, Khan not Invited, Operaman’s back, Jobs back, Fausta’s back (but not here yet) Thoughts under the fedora – Da Tech Guy Blog on Venezuela: Did the Minister of Defense back out at the last minute?

Archives

  • 2019
    • December 2019
    • May 2019
    • January 2019
  • 2018
    • December 2018
    • October 2018
    • July 2018
    • June 2018
    • April 2018
    • March 2018
    • February 2018
    • January 2018
  • 2017
    • December 2017
    • November 2017
    • October 2017
    • September 2017
    • August 2017
    • July 2017
    • June 2017
    • May 2017
    • April 2017
    • March 2017
    • February 2017
    • January 2017
  • 2016
    • December 2016
    • November 2016
    • October 2016
    • September 2016
    • August 2016
    • July 2016
    • June 2016
    • May 2016
    • April 2016
    • March 2016
    • February 2016
    • January 2016
  • 2015
    • December 2015
    • November 2015
    • October 2015
    • September 2015
    • August 2015
    • July 2015
    • June 2015
    • May 2015
    • April 2015
    • March 2015
    • February 2015
    • January 2015
  • 2014
    • December 2014
    • November 2014
    • October 2014
    • September 2014
    • August 2014
    • July 2014
    • June 2014
    • May 2014
    • April 2014
    • March 2014
    • February 2014
    • January 2014
  • 2013
    • December 2013
    • November 2013
    • October 2013
    • September 2013
    • August 2013
    • July 2013
    • June 2013
    • May 2013
    • April 2013
    • March 2013
    • February 2013
    • January 2013
  • 2012
    • December 2012
    • November 2012
    • October 2012
    • September 2012
    • August 2012
    • July 2012
    • June 2012
    • May 2012
    • April 2012
    • March 2012
    • February 2012
    • January 2012
  • 2011
    • December 2011
    • November 2011
    • October 2011
    • September 2011
    • August 2011
    • July 2011
    • June 2011
    • May 2011
    • April 2011
    • March 2011
    • February 2011
    • January 2011
  • 2010
    • December 2010
    • November 2010
    • October 2010
    • September 2010
    • August 2010
    • July 2010
    • June 2010
    • May 2010
    • April 2010
    • March 2010
    • February 2010
    • January 2010
  • 2009
    • December 2009
    • November 2009
    • October 2009
    • September 2009
    • August 2009
    • July 2009
    • June 2009
    • May 2009
    • April 2009
    • March 2009
    • February 2009
    • January 2009
  • 2008
    • December 2008
    • November 2008
    • October 2008
    • September 2008
    • August 2008
    • July 2008
    • June 2008
    • May 2008
    • April 2008
    • March 2008
    • February 2008
    • January 2008
  • 2007
    • December 2007
    • November 2007
    • October 2007
    • September 2007
    • August 2007
    • July 2007
    • June 2007
    • May 2007
    • April 2007
    • March 2007
    • February 2007
    • January 2007
  • 2006
    • December 2006
    • November 2006
    • October 2006
    • September 2006
    • August 2006
    • July 2006
    • June 2006
    • May 2006
    • April 2006
    • March 2006
    • February 2006
    • January 2006
  • 2005
    • December 2005
    • November 2005
    • October 2005
    • September 2005
    • August 2005
    • July 2005
    • June 2005
    • May 2005
    • April 2005
    • March 2005
    • February 2005
    • January 2005
  • 2004
    • December 2004
    • November 2004
    • October 2004
    • September 2004
    • August 2004
    • July 2004
    • June 2004
    • May 2004
    • April 2004
    • March 2004
Content Copyright Fausta's Blog

Site Developed and Managed by 300m.com