AP: Ecuador President Threatens to Resign

[Eugene]

Ecuador President Threatens to Resign

Saturday, February 17, 2007

(02-17) 18:08 PST QUITO, Ecuador (AP) --

New leftist President Rafael Correa said Saturday he will resign if his supporters
do not win control of an assembly to rewrite Ecuador's constitution.

Congress voted Tuesday to hold an April 15 national referendum on whether
to create the assembly. Most opposition lawmakers abandoned the session
before the vote in protest, calling the measure unconstitutional.

Correa, who took office Jan. 15, said in a nationally broadcast radio speech that
if opposition candidates win control of the assembly, "I simply have to go home."

-snip-

Correa says he hopes to win at least 70 percent of the seats in the assembly. He
says the assembly is necessary to limit the power of traditional political parties,
which he blames for the country's problems.

-snip-

Full article: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2007/02/17/international/i162242S44.DTL

[cigsandcoffee]

1. That seems a bit dramatic, really.

If a person fails at first, it's better to keep trying than to pick up your toys from the sandbox and storm off home.

[countmyvote4real]

2. If that were here, * staying is more drastic than him leaving.

In 2001 * had a Dem Senate. He didn't leave. Instead, key Senate leaders and the media were sent anthrax. That's drastic.

Just like every moment of the * regime is drastic.

[AndyTiedye]

3. And When The Anthrax Didn't Kill Any Democratic Senators, They…

[goforit]

8. LOL!!! Yes drama is common in this part of the world.

[Toucano]

10. Like when McCain said he would commit suicide if the Dems took congress?

I'm still waiting to read the obit!

[Vidar]

4. Seems foolish.

[Judi Lynn]

5. Speaking of Ecuador, here's something you really might find interesting:

Alleged accomplice in slaying of Ecuador presidential candidate imprisoned
The Associated Press
Published: February 15, 2007

QUITO, Ecuador: An Ecuadorean fugitive deported from the United States to face trial in the 1999 assassination of a former presidential candidate has been taken to a maximum-security prison.

Arrested in upstate New York after being pulled over for not wearing his seat belt, Christian Steven Ponce, 36, now awaits the resumption of a trial suspended years ago when he fled the country.

Ponce faces up to eight years in prison if convicted of being an accomplice to the murder of leftist lawmaker and former presidential candidate Jaime Hurtado, Hurtado's adviser, and a bodyguard, all of whom were shot dead on Feb. 17, 1999 near Congress. His attorney, Jorge Andrade, did not respond to numerous phone calls by The Associated Press to his home and office.

According to Ecuadorean police reports, the assassination was ordered by Colombian paramilitaries, who claimed Hurtado had been collaborating with that country's guerrillas. Hurtado's supporters disagree, suspecting Ecuadorean politicians were involved.
(snip/...)

http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/02/16/america/LA-GEN-Ecuador-US-Murder-Suspect.php



The murdered "leftist" Ecuadorian Presidential candidate, Jaime Hurtado

Earlier story:

Feb 14, 2007 3:55 pm US/Eastern

Suspected Assassin Nabbed In N.Y. Car Stop
Man Pulled Over For Seat Belt Violation, Found To Be Wanted Overseas
(AP) BUFFALO, N.Y. An Ecuadorean man pulled over in an upstate New York hamlet for not wearing his seat belt has been returned to his home country to face charges he assassinated a former presidential candidate in 1999, U.S. immigration officials said Wednesday.

Christian Steven Ponce Salas, 36, was turned over to Ecuadorean officials in Quito, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokesman Michael Gilhooly said. He had been held in a federal detention facility in Batavia, east of Buffalo, since shortly after his Feb. 3 arrest in the hamlet of Palenville, about 40 miles south of Albany.

Authorities said he was in the United States illegally and had been a fugitive since last February, when he defied a deportation order by a U.S. Immigration judge in Miami.

Ponce Salas was wanted in Ecuador in connection with the killing of two members of the Ecuadorean National Congress, former presidential candidate Jaime Hurtado and Pablo Tapia, and a bodyguard, Wellington Borja, immigration officials said. All were shot dead outside Ecuador's Congress on Feb. 17, 1999.
(snip/...)

http://wjz.com/topstories/topstories_story_045173725.html



AP Photo by Dolores Ochoa - 2 days ago

Christian Ponce Salas, right, and Washington Aguirre, are seen when showed to the press in Quito, Feb. 19, 1999. Ponce Salas who was deported Tuesday, Feb. 13, 2007 from the United States, is facing charges for the murder of the Ecuadorian leftist presidential candidate Jaime Hurtado who was killed Feb. 17, 1999 in front of the National Congress building in Quito.

[Judi Lynn]

6. Some very decent lines from his speech:

Correa, who has called Congress a "sewer of corruption," has insisted the assembly would have the authority to dismiss not only lawmakers but judges and even the president.

"If we want a change, vote for the candidates of the people to end these mafias that have plundered the country," he said in his speech.
(snip)

Recent Ecuadorean Presidential candidates:

President Rafael Correa:

[rpannier]

7. I wish scrubbie had said that prior to the election...

and that he took that hideous troll and elmer fudd with him.

[Judi Lynn]

9. Ecuador Stands Up to the US

February 19, 2007

"We Will Not Permit the Violation of Our Air Space"
Ecuador Stands Up to the US
By ROGER BURBACH

Quito, Ecudor.

The leftist government of Rafael Correa has moved assertively in its relations with the United States during its first month in office. The Minister of Foreign Relations, Maria Fernanda Espinosa, in a meeting with the Foreign Press Association in Quito declared that Ecuador intends to close the US military base located at Manta. "Ecuador is a sovereign nation, we do not need any foreign troops in our country," she said. The treaty for the base expires in 2009 and will not be renewed.

The largest US base on South America's Pacific coast, it was ostensibly set up to help monitor narco-trafficking over the ocean and in the nearby Amazon basin. But it has become a major operations center for US intelligence gathering and for coordinating counterinsurgency efforts against the leftist guerrillas in neighboring Colombia. The base's air runway, built at a cost of eighty million dollars, is capable of accommodating the largest and most sophisticated US spy and intelligence gathering air craft. Manta is also used as a port for US naval operations in the Pacific. Upwards of 475 US military personal are continually rotated between Manta and the US Southern Command headquarters in Florida.

Popular sentiment in Ecuador overwhelmingly supports the closure of the US base at Manta. Since its establishment in 1999 the civil war in Colombia has spread to Ecuador, bringing refugees, violence and social conflict, particularly in the Amazon region. Aerial spraying of herbicides by planes originating in Colombia eradicates food crops and has deleterious health effects on Ecuadorian children and adults. The Colombian and US governments claim that the defoliants are only sprayed on the Colombian side of the border and that there are no flights over Ecuador. But President Correa vehemently disagrees: "We will not permit the continual violation of Ecuadorian air space by planes, that are not even Colombian, but from the United States. They enter our country, and then fly back to Colombia." Correa has ordered the Ecuadorian air force "to intercept any planes that violate our air space."
(snip/...)

http://www.counterpunch.org/burbach02192007.html