Ecuador backs leftist changes

President Rafael Correa secured a massive victory toward rewriting Ecuador's Constitution and weakening the country's unpopular Congress when Ecuadoreans lined up in Sunday's nationwide referendum on whether to back the election of a constituent assembly. In doing so, Mr. Correa joins a growing number of leftist leaders throughout Latin America who are using the popular vote to forge new political paths.

"The future was at stake, the country was at stake, and Ecuadoreans have said 'yes' to that future," said Correa after exit polls showed 78 percent support.

The win was fueled by a frustration with Ecuador's political elite – the same frustration that helped usher Correa, a professor and political outsider, into the presidency in November.

The wide margin will certainly consolidate more power for Correa, a political neophyte viewed by many as an idealist who has successfully wooed the poor. But critics warn that he'll follow in the footsteps of Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez by using his mandate to stifle opposition.

"It's another in the steps toward attempting to create an alternative model of development to the neo-liberal consensus that has dominated [Latin America] in the past couple decades," says Ernesto Capello, an assistant professor of Latin American history at the University of Vermont. "As in Bolivia, Venezuela, Argentina, Nicaragua, Brazil, and so on, Ecuador is going through a period of intense repudiation of the policies of this era."

If Ecuador's Supreme Electoral Tribunal approves Sunday's referendum, as expected, on April 24, elections for the 130 assembly representatives will take place in August. The assembly would then begin its work in mid-September, and have 180 days to create a new constitution. Approval of assembly decisions will require an absolute majority, or 66 votes. Ecuadoreans can anticipate voting on a new constitution by mid-2008.

'Democratic dictatorship'?

While the route that Correa takes will ultimately be determined by the new Constitution, and the degree to which it empowers him as president, his detractors say he is merely following leaders such as Chávez and Bolivia's President Evo Morales, both of whom called for referendums to rewrite their constitutions shortly after taking office.

In Venezuela, whose assembly was overwhelmingly filled with Chávez supporters, the constitution was changed to widen Chávez's powers and lengthen his potential time in office. The document expanded the rights of minorities as it also sought to break up the political stranglehold that the elite had on the country, but it also reduced civilian control of the army while increasing the state's role in managing the economy.

Bolivia's constituent assembly has been stalled by in-fighting from a powerful opposition that is expected to curtail the direction that Morales and his supporters desire in a constitution, which is to be drawn up by this summer.

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