Promised Social Change in Ecuador

Promised Social Change in Ecuador

By Stephen Lendman

Created Oct 15 2007 - 8:29am

Raphael Correa was elected Ecuador's president last November and took office

January 15 promising social change. He's the country's eighth president in

the last decade including three previous ones driven from office by mass

street protest opposition against their misrule and public neglect. Correa

must now deliver and just got a boost from his governing Movimiento Alianza

Pais' landslide Constituent Assembly election victory to rewrite the

nation's constitution for the 177th time in Ecuador's history hoping to get

it right this time. Awaiting a final tabulation of results, it appears

Correa supporters got around 70% of the vote winning 80 of the 130 Assembly

seats. That's a comfortable majority to push through change, but doing it

won't be easy, and Correa's commitment has yet to be tested.

Longtime Latin American expert James Petras writes "Ecuador today faces

great opportunities for a basic social transformation and also grave threats

from imperial networks" the way states in the region always do. He notes how

in recent years mobilized urban and rural popular classes ousted neoliberal

regimes only to see them resurface under so-called left-center leaders (who

are neither left nor center) like Lula in Brazil, Kirchner in Argentina,

Morales in Bolivia, Vasquez in Uruguay and others. Even Hugo Chavez governs

from the "pragmatic left." He combines grassroots participatory democracy

and redistributive social policies with support for business interests but

on a more equitable basis than under previous Venezuelan leaders.

Petras quotes a Forbes magazine editor's comment on former Mexican president

Luis Echeverria (1970 - 1976) that's very revealing and explains Correa's

challenge - "He talks to the Left and works for the Right." That's pretty

common in Latin America today, and Brazil stands out as Exhibit A under

former Workers' Party co-founder and the country's current president, Luiz

Inacio Lula da Silva (2002 to present).

Lula promised social change, but delivered betrayal. Even before being

elected, he signed a letter of understanding with the IMF promising no

change and business as usual. He agreed to full debt service and repayment

terms as well as to back economic stability and neoliberal policies. He

didn't disappoint.

Once elected with a clear majority, he cut public employee pensions 30%; his

agrarian policy subsidized agribusiness; his promise of land redistribution

to the Landless Workers Movement (MST) was broken; spending for health and

education was cut; employer rights to fire workers and cut severance pay

were supported; extended privatizations of state-owned companies were

backed; thuggish troops occupied Haiti; and right-wing bankers, corporate

executives and free-marketeers were appointed economic ministers and central

bankers. Petras sums up his record saying: "Lula fits the profile of a

right-wing neoliberal politician," not a "center-leftist" one.

Current Argentina president Nestor Carlos Kirchner is Exhibit B (in office

from 2003 to the present with an October 28 presidential election ahead and

the president's wife ahead in the polls to win it). Petras notes how

compared to Lula, he seems progressive. He cut unemployment from 20 to 15%,

raised pensions and wages, renegotiated part of the country's foreign debt

and rescinded immunity for military torturers although with little to show

for it.

In sharp contrast, "fraudulent privatizations" in Argentina's key industrial

areas weren't reversed; inequalities remained the same or increased in some

sectors; poverty levels are still almost 30%; 10% inflation diluted nominal

earnings gains; the socio-economic power structure stayed the same;

Argentina's thuggish troops occupy Haiti; its central bankers and economic

ministers are hard right; debt service was placed above health and education

spending; and unfettered capitalism was supported following the 2001

economic collapse and subsequent uprisings. Petras calls Kirchner a

"pragmatic conservative willing to dissent from the US when it" serves

Argentina's business interests. As for being a social democrat? Forget it.

Bolivia's president and first ever indigenous head of state (2006 to

present), Juan Evo Morales Ayma, is Exhibit C, and along with Lula, the

greatest disappointment. Petras cites his government as "the most striking

example of (a) 'center-left' regime" to betray its supporters and embrace

neoliberalim once in office. Mass uprisings ousted two earlier presidents

who defended foreign investor natural resources ownership, and Bolivians

elected Morales to do what they didn't. Instead, he rejected oil and gas

expropriation, supports Big Oil interests, and embraced business as usual

policies. Under nationalizations Morales-style, current contractual

arrangements are effectively intact, and the country's mineral resources

have been sold off to the greatest ever number of foreign investors.

In addition, Morales broke his promise to triple the painfully low minimum

wage, increased it 10% instead, and maintained previous neoliberal fiscal

austerity and economic stability policies. He also tolerates the US Drug

Enforcement Agency's intrusive presence and the Pentagon's Chapare military

base; appointed hard right economic, defense and other ministers; opposed

agrarian reform; supports large landowners; provides them large subsidies

and tax incentives; and backs the Confederation of Private Businessmen in

Bolivia by promoting foreign investment, social spending cuts,

prioritization of exports, and other pro-business policies above the

interests of the people who elected him. Petras says Morales "excels in

public theater" by combining "political demagogy" to his base while backing

neoliberal IMF austerity and business-friendly policies.

Here's a sample of the former from Morales' September 24 UN General Assembly

speech when he said: "....each day we are destroying the future of humanity.

(We must) pinpoint who our enemies are (and the) damage (they do) that may

put an end to humanity....I think that capitalism is the worst enemy of

humanity and if we do not change the model, change the system (our efforts

here) will be totally in vain....Capitalism has twins, the market and

war....This is why (we must) change economic models....particularly in the

western world." It's lovely rhetoric from a man who, in fact, embraces the

model he denounces.

He symbolizes the fantasy of "new winds from the Left" sweeping the region,

but too many others do as well in Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Peru, Chile,

Colombia, Mexico and all of Central America including Costa Rica. There, a

US intimidation campaign narrowly got DR-CAFTA passed in an October 7

national referendum that still awaits a recount before confirming what

pre-referendum polls predicted would go the other way.

That aside, there's strong support for the left throughout Latin America

that eventually may bubble up into change. It's too early to know for sure

where Correa stands, but his commitment will soon be fully tested. Here's

what he's up against.

US regional dominance is still strong, and thinking otherwise is misguided.

It's not like in the 1990s "Golden Age of Pillage," but it's still able to

keep business flourishing, including in Venezuela where it's booming.

Nonetheless, a new generation of committed leftist leaders are emerging with

Correa yet to prove he's one of them and may in the end disappoint.

His chance to prove otherwise is coming, and he won it convincingly with a

54% second round presidential electoral victory. It was followed by an

overwhelming 82% referendum majority to convoke a Constituent Assembly to

draft a new socially progressive constitution. Correa says it will be based

on "principles not models (and) every country must decide according to its

own different realities." The Assembly will convene the end of October to

begin its work with a long struggle ahead to complete it. It hopes to finish

in six months, but its mandate allows more time if it's needed.

Correa wants the constitution to "facilitate" foreign investment (especially

in banking) "to force competition." He's against monopolies, traditional

oligarchic power, and the one-sided big media opposition to his government.

He's also renegotiating the country's debt, is assessing its legitimacy,

wants a constitutional limit on its repayment, and intends to keep the

dollar the official currency with eventual plans to abandon it. In addition,

he favors ending the central bank's autonomy, joined the Bank of the South

(to be officially founded November 3 and headquartered in Caracas), expelled

the World Bank's representative in April, is ending relations with the IMF,

and aims to transform the current neoliberal system into one that will aid

"the recovery of the government's planning capacity (and be a) beginning of

the concept of a solidarity system."

Correa's close economic adviser and leading September 30 vote getter,

Alberto Acosta, said the nation's "economy should be based on human beings"

and that capital, investment, the profit motive motive and workings of the

state should be subordinate to human needs. If Correa supports that view and

will back it fully, he's off to a good start. It's too soon to tell but

early signs are promising.

He talks the talk and is starting to prove it. He promised social democratic

change and a "citizens' revolution" and said he'll use the country's oil

revenues for the people with a positive step already taken. On October 4, he

signed a decree increasing Ecuador's share of windfall foreign oil company

profits from 50 to 99% while committing to honor existing contracts.

Announcing the move, Correa said: "No more plundering, no more surrender, no

more waste. (Ecuador's oil) now belongs to all Ecuadoreans" with revenues

from it earmarked for social welfare and infrastructure.

Correa also indicated after a new constitution is drafted and approved by

referendum, he'll call for new elections for president, vice-president and

Congress. The current legislature has no Correa party representatives in it,

but he hopes overwhelming popular support will change that. The sitting

Congress, according to Correa "must be tossed back into the street," but

that's for the people to decide. Democracy, however, isn't just about

elections. It's about what happens afterwards, and that's for Correa, the

Constituent Assembly and a newly elected Congress to decide.

The September 30 victory was Correa's third triumph in nine months, and he

hailed it saying the "Ecuadorean people have won the mother of all battles.

(It was) an unquestionable victory." Earlier he echoed Hugo Chavez's call

for a "new socialism of the twenty-first century (and that Ecuador must end)

the perverse (neoliberal) system that has destroyed our democracy, our

economy, our society." He won't have long to back that rhetoric with action,

but doing it won't be easy.

The long shadow of Washington haunts the region, and its influence pressures

and subverts change from the left. At the same time, countries like Ecuador

face conflicting interests - maintaining the status quo from the right and

demands for real change from below through redistributive social policies

and nationalizing strategic sectors like oil, gas, banks and land.

Petras is hopeful "decay and profound disintegration of all the traditional

parties opens the way for (progressive) new political forces." He sees an

"historical opening" and opportunity for change through an "alliance of

trade unionists, Indian militants, movement leaders and ecologists" in the

newly formed Polo Democratico (PD). Its agenda calls for a "total rupture

(and) transformation of the Constituent Assembly into the legislative arm of

the peoples' movement." Its aim is bold and revolutionary - to establish

"popular sovereignty" that places basic resources like oil and gas under

"popular self-management" and out of the hands of local oligarchs and

exploitive foreign capital. It's a national liberation struggle to defeat

imperialism and savage capitalism and return power to the people. Now it's

for Correa and his coalition to prove they're up to the challenge. So far at

least, it looks like they'll try.

_______

About author Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at

lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net [1]. Also visit his blog site at

sjlendman.blogspot.com [2].

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"A little patience and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their

spells dissolve, and the people recovering their true sight, restore their

government to its true principles. It is true that in the meantime we are

suffering deeply in spirit,

and incurring the horrors of a war and long oppressions of enormous public

debt. But if the game runs sometimes against us at home we must have

patience till luck turns, and then we shall have an opportunity of winning

back the principles we have lost, for this is a game where principles are at

stake."

-Thomas Jefferson