The Guardian 27 April, 2005
Victory for people’s power in Ecuador
Ecuador is the latest South American state to oust a reactionary President and install a new government, hopefully more representative of the Ecuadorian people.
The defeated President was chased out of office by demonstrators and attempted to flee the country but was stopped at the airport.
The new President is Alfredo Palacio who is being put to the test by the people who hope for the fulfilment of both their old and new dreams. Eighty percent of the people live in profound poverty without hope of a solution until now.
The assumption of power by Palacio, who had been a vice-president, took place after eight days of mass demonstrations by sectors of the population unhappy with Ecuador’s government, which has maintained the nation in crisis since December.
People who had taken to the streets and confronted the police showed their dissatisfaction with deposed President Gutiérrez and parliamentary deputies for their inability to dissolve the Supreme Court and reform the judicial system. Demonstrators demanded that all the parliamentarians should resign.
The appointment of a new president and the exit of his predecessor means a return to constitutional legality and the beginning of a new type of citizenship, a step in the direction of a new kind of democracy.
Palacio maintains that it is necessary to discuss a new nation via popular assemblies and to rebuild the country in a direct way, within the law and with respect for the Constitution. He immediately sacked the previous police and military leaders.
The new president, who states that he does not belong to any political party, referred to the possibility of establishing a constituent assembly “within a framework that is Constitutional and legal.”
One of the newly appointed Government Ministers Mauricio Gandara called on the US not to interfere in Ecuadorian domestic affairs and rejected recommendations by US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to hold early elections.
Gandara said that Miss Rice has nothing to do with the country’s foreign policy, adding that under the Constitution a Vice-President can act as head of state for the remainder of the presidential term.
The Embassy of the United States in Ecuador’s capital city Quito has been evacuated on security grounds. The evacuation was ordered in the face of a possible street demonstration against the US government.