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http://www.telegrafo.com.ec/actualidad/noticia/archive/actualidad/2010/10/18/Correa_3A00_-Obama-no-estuvo-involucrado.aspx President Correa was interviewed last week by a Colombian TV network, and an Ecuadorian paper published the transcript. In the interview, the President states unequivocally there was no USA involvement in the attempted coup on September 30th, and while he has suspicions of right-wing US involvement, his government has no proof of any US complicity. They do have proof that the extreme right-wing in the USA has funded the right-wing opposition inside Ecuador, but the Ecuadorian government has no proof of any direct US involvement in the events of september 30th. In terms of right wing US funding, the president did not indicate one way or the other whether these are private or government sources of funding. Ricardo Patino, head of foreign relations for Correa, has underscored publicly that the USA was not involved in the coup attempt. What they do have are some recorded audiotapes of Ecuadorian police exhorting angrily their fellow employees to assassinate the President, and we have one sharpshooter who fired on the presidential vehicle. But this a conspiracy does not make. More on the PCMLE and MPD--Been doing a bit more research on these groups. As the PCMLE website indicates, they disavow the Maoist label which many Ecuadorians attribute to them. They are not a Maoist party but rather are of Hoxhaist origin. They split from the Communist Party of Ecuador in 1964. The latter claim the PCMLE was founded by the CIA. (no comment) The MPD is the legal, parliamentarian front for the PCMLE. They backed Correa up until this year, but since they have a large membership in the public sector unions and the student organizations, they withdrew their support after Correa began his attack on the unions and on university autonomy. One of the leaders of the FEUE, a student organization aligned with the PCMLE, has been in jail on "terrorism" charges for 10 months. Marcelo Rivera is currently on hunger strike, and is considered by the MPD and FEUE to be a political prisoner. Over 100 social movement leaders have been arrested on trumped up "terrorism" charges. The MPD asserts that Correa is trying to break the unions. Luis Macas and some members of CONAIE agree with this analysis. According to a recent NACLA article, the furor over the Public Services Law, which provoked over 1000 police to stage countrywide protests, was due to the fact that Correa vetoed sections of the bill which had been negotiated in the Legislative Assembly between union representatives, the MPD, and members of Correa's own Alianza Pais. Correa utilized line-item veto to override sections of the bill: Coup in Ecuador? Written by Kristin Bricker Tuesday, 12 October 2010 18:21 Source: NACLA On September 30, about 1,000 Ecuadoran national police officers took to the streets, blocking key intersections and taking over public space, in protest of a new law that eliminated their bonuses and other benefits. Even though the protesting police represented a small fraction of the 42,000-member force, things quickly spun out of control. A small number of low-ranking Air Force soldiers shut down airports, the police occupied Congress, and they held Correa hostage in a hospital for more than 10 hours until a mixed Special Operations team rescued him. The unrest left 10 dead and 274 injured. The police rebellion began after Correa used line-item vetoes to change certain parts of the Public Services Law, which reportedly aimed to streamline Ecuador’s public sector by doing away with certain bonuses and forcing many public servants into early retirement. The president’s line-item veto power is provided for under the country’s 2008 constitution, and the president has often used it to overrule Congress. According to Edwin Bedoya, vice president of the Ecuadoran Federation of Unitarian Working Class Organizations (CEDOCUT), the version of the Public Services Law that Congress originally passed was crafted in negotiations between Correa’s Alianza PAIS party and public servants. “But we saw in the second round of voting that the president had vetoed the agreements and had gotten rid of certain workers’ rights,” Bedoya said. When Congress, including some members of Alianza PAIS, balked at Correa’s changes to the legislation, the president threatened to use his right to dissolve Congress to pass his version of the Public Services law. But the ensuing rebellion, Correa and others have emphasized, was not a spontaneous uprising. While still being held hostage, Correa declared: “It is a coup attempt led by the opposition and certain sections of the armed forces and the police.” Many Latin Americans, still rattled by the successful coup against leftist President Manuel Zelaya in Honduras last year, feared Correa would be next. Others argued that calling the unrest a “coup” is an exaggeration, or even that Correa kidnapped himself in order to increase his popularity and political power. Yet the protests took place in at least four provinces in Ecuador, casting doubt on their spontaneity. And as Correa pointed out, the protests were “coordinated with the closure . . . of the airport, coordinated with the attacks on the [state television’s] relay antennas, with the invasion of [government-owned] Ecuador TV’s studios,” and the police takeover of Congress. Moreover, video footage of the striking police during the operation that freed Correa clearly demonstrates that the police were shooting to kill. Correa told the press that the armored vehicle that drove him away from the hospital was shot multiple times. While police held Correa hostage, former Ecuadoran president Lucio Gutiérrez—an outspoken critic of Correa—gave interviews from his exile in Brazil, hailing the police rebellion as a coup. “The end of Correa’s tyranny is at hand,” he said, and called for the “dissolution of parliament” and “early presidential elections.” Former president of Congress Alberto Acosta, a Correa supporter turned critic, reported that “ex-soldiers and ex-police, the very people that make up the fat of the Lucio’s party,” were seen in barracks in multiple cities. When police briefly occupied Congress, Acosta added, the representatives who are members of Gutiérrez’s Patriotic Society Party entered and exited freely, while members of other parties “had trouble entering.” Both Correa and former National Police commander Freddy Martínez, who resigned after his failure to control his troops, argue that outside instigators infiltrated the police, misled police about the austerity measures in the Public Service Law, and provoked the uprising. Labor and indigenous organizations in Ecuador, however, have taken a more nuanced line. The police rebellion occurred, they argue, because Ecuador’s right wing is taking advantage of weaknesses created by Correa’s alienating governing style. Although they opposed any coup attempt and demanded that constitutional order be respected, they also criticized Correa for marginalizing his natural allies in the social movements and leaving himself vulnerable to attacks from the right. A joint statement from four of Ecuador’s largest indigenous organizations rejected the “right-wing’s actions that in an undercover way form part of the attempted coup” and called upon its members to “be on alert and ready to mobilize.” However, the statement criticizes the Correa administration for violently repressing mobilizations against transnational mining, oil, and agro- industrial companies. The organizations argued, “The social crisis that was let loose today was also provoked by the authoritarian character and the unwillingness to dialogue in the lawmaking process. We have seen how laws that were negotiated [with social sectors] were vetoed by the President of the Republic. . . . This scenario nurtures the conservative sectors.” Labor leader Bedoya says that on September 30, the CEDOCUT called on all sectors to hit the streets to restore constitutional order. However, like his country’s indigenous organizations, he qualified his organization’s defense of Correa: “We do believe that part of the blame for what is happening lies with not accepting dialogue with social sectors.” Acosta, who co-founded the Alianza PAIS with Correa, echoed this. “The president and his government don’t know how to dialogue,” he said. “They impose their laws, without even respecting the criteria of the assembly members of their own block.” Even worse, argued indigenous organizations on the day of the coup, the Correa administration has repressed them just as right-wing governments have. “Faced with the criticism and mobilization of communities against transnational mining, oil, and agro-industrial companies,” wrote the CONAIE, the ECUARUNARI, the CONFENIAE, and CONAICE, “the government, instead of creating a dialogue, responds with violence and repression. . . . The only thing this type of politics provokes is to open spaces to the Right and create spaces of destabilization.” Bedoya shares this analysis: “Of course the right takes advantage of this, and takes advantage of the most powerful sector, which is the national police and the military, and it begins to sow discontent . . . but the government’s behavior is making that possible.” Acosta hopes that his former ally will learn from the police rebellion. “History has given to President Correa, once again, the opportunity to reacquaint himself with the origins of the revolutionary process, to rectify. Hopefully he understands it that way.” “A Citizens’ Revolution,” argued Bedoya, “implies a respect for the rights of all people, of the workers, of organizations’ collective rights, and to establish a dialogue to reach a minimum consensus with the social sectors.” Below is the analysis from the union federation CEDOCUT website: http://www.cedocut.org/cms/ According to CEDOCUT, the entire passel of new laws created by Correa's party--the laws on mines, water, public finance, education, public sector, and public businesses, were instituted autocratically without the participation of the popular movement, and undermine popular initiatives to the benefit of the private sector and multinational corporations. Furthermore, the government is pushing for "labor flexibility", and we all know what that means. There is a growing consensus among all the various sources I have researched, from Accion Ecologica and the MPD, to Pachakutik and CONAIE, as well as various labor organizations and student organizations, representing the vast majority of organizations of the social movements of Ecuador, that the primary thrust of Correa's government is capitalist developmentalism. It remains to be seen whether or not Correa responds to popular calls for a Golpe de Timon, or a rapprochement with the left. Given the institutional and legal ramifications of all the recent laws his government has passed, one cannot help but be pessimistic at that prospect. There is also further analysis coming from the left in Latin America which disputes the argument that the events of september 30th constituted even a poorly orchestrated coup attempt. A spokesperson for the Argentine PT agrees with the Ecuadorian unions, student groups, and indigenous organizations, that the police rebellion was not a coup attempt. http://www.kaosenlared.net/noticia/que-paso-en-ecuador According to that line of reasoning, neither the high command of the military nor the police deviated from their loyalty to President Correa. The discontent emerged from below. Furthermore, none of the supposed coup plotters called for Correa to be deposed. Their demands were purely economic. Finally, the president even received support from the bourgeois right-wing in Guayaquil. All of these groups have backed the presidential decision to institute a state of siege inside the country, which has now been prolonged inside Quito. Outside the country, Correa received the support of the OAS, President Obama, who called him personally to express his support, the UN, the UNASUR, and even the right wing governments of the region such as Peru, Colombia, and Chile. There is plenty of evidence to demonstrate that the president was not really a victim of kidnapping either. Correa had access to his cell phone, guards were not posted outside his door, and he even had negotiated his peaceful exit from the hospital with his presumptive kidnappers. All of this has been verified by Dr's Gilberto Calle and Fernando Vargas, as well as by journalists who were present in the room with the president. To be sure, Lucio Gutierrez tried to take advantage of the situation to press publicly for Correa's replacement, but his was the lone voice among the right wing bourgeoisie and partidocracy crying in the wilderness. Not only does Correa represent the bonapartist head of a bourgeois government, seeking to disarticulate the social movements and push forward with a neo-extractivist economic program, he is even deviating from Chavez's foreign policy by working with the Colombian government to encircle the FARC rebels. With friends like these.... Greg McDonald ________________________________________________ Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
