“The long neoliberal night that has done us so much harm is over at last,” said Rafael Correa, Ecuador’s President-elect, after winning a crushing victory over his right-wing opponent Álvaro Noboa.
The full extent of Mr Correa’s triumph in Sunday’s run-off election will not be known until tomorrow, but will exceed the expectations of his most optimistic supporters. Fears that fraud would be used to thwart him have proved to be unfounded.
A self-confident American educated economist, Mr Correa, 43, has promised “21st-century socialism”. To American ears that has inauspicious echoes of President Chávez of Venezuela. Mr Correa conceded that he admired Mr Chávez, but insisted that he was his own man. He has confirmed that he will not sign the free-trade accord that the US has been promoting, arguing that it would ruin small farmers. He reiterated that the US Air Force would have to vacate its base on the Pacific coast when the present arrangement comes up for renewal in 2008, and indicated that he might suspend payments on Ecuador’s foreign debt if there were more urgent spending priorities such as health, education and welfare.
Yet Mr Correa offset his defiance with soothing assurances: the US dollar would remain Ecuador’s currency for his four-year term, and foreign oil companies would play a big role in expanding production of the country’s main revenue-generator. Having opposed the adoption of the dollar by a previous government, he agreed that dropping it now would bring economic instability.
His vision of socialism had more to do with creating large numbers of small businesses by widening access to cheap credit than expropriating the means of production, he said.
Advertisement
His success in reassuring small-scale entrepreneurs that he was on their side seems to have been a big factor in Mr Correa’s unexpectedly comprehensive victory over Mr Noboa, a banana tycoon.
The greatest cause for concern for the outside world may turn out not to be Mr Correa’s left-of-centre nationalism but the uncertainty that could arise from his determination to take on the political establishment by drafting a new constitution.Ecuador has had 18 constitutions since it gained independence from Spain in 1830, but Mr Correa insisted that nothing less would suffice to overthrow what he sees as a corrupt and self-serving political system that, he believes, has prevented Ecuador from realising its potential as a country rich in natural and human resources.
His reforming zeal puts him on a collision course with the elected Congress, which will be dominated by the Opposition when it assembles in January. He refused to field candidates for his PAIS movement in last month’s congressional elections.
The President-elect said that one of his first actions would be to institute the election of a new assembly charged with drafting the constitution. Members of Congress feel that their popular mandate is just as valid as Mr Correa’s and have no intention of being supplanted.
Some of his more experienced allies have tried to dissuade him from the strategy.