Posted on 09/26/2006 1:59:59 PM PDT by knighthawk
QUITO, Ecuador (AP) -- The presidential front-runner said on Monday he is proud to call Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez his friend.
Rafael Correa also said he would not extend the U.S. military's use of the Pacific coast Manta air base as an operational site for drug surveillance flights when the treaty runs out in 2009.
"A symbol of sovereignty is to not have foreign soldiers on national soil," he said. The only way the U.S. military presence would continue in Ecuador was if Washington allowed "an Ecuadorean military base in Miami," he said.
Correa said he does not see what the problem is in his friendship with Chavez.
"I am honored by the friendship," he said. "If I am a friend of Chavez, 'What a mistake!' If I were a friend of George Bush, they would have elected me man of the year," Correa, 43, told foreign correspondents.
But Correa denied accusations from conservative political rivals that Chavez is financing his presidential run in a field of 13 candidates ahead of the Oct. 15 election.
"How is he going to help me? First of all it's prohibited under election law, and second our campaign is the most austere". He said his supporters are downloading campaign propaganda from his Web site and reproducing it on their own.
Correa, an economist with a doctorate from the University of Illinois, leads his closest challenger Leon Roldos, a center-left former vice president, in the polls.
The results of a simulated ballot, released on Saturday by independent firm Market, gave Correa 26.4 percent support, as opposed to 19.5 percent for Roldos. It surveyed 1,280 people who took part.
Those results have spooked foreign investors. On Monday, Correa said he would seek to renegotiate Ecuador's foreign debt service, but would not rule out a moratorium on payments to international lenders "if there isn't openness on the part of the markets, multinationals and governments." "The world is recognizing that the (International) Monetary Fund and World Bank have not been a part of the solution, but rather the problem," he said. "Life and national commitments come first, before the pockets of creditors and supposed international commitments."
He said Ecuador cannot afford its current $2 billion debt service, representing 7 percent of the country's gross domestic product. "Ecuador cannot pay more than 3 percent," he said.
Correa said he would overhaul contracts with foreign oil firms for Ecuador to retain a greater share of petroleum wealth and expressed hope that Ecuador could eventually abandon the U.S. dollar as its official currency.
Ping
Ok, so we will simply have to send in hi-flying flights to destroy all crops in Ecuador, since they wont help us narrow the focus.
Chavez' brand of populism sells big in Latin America, in fact I would describe "populism" as the default or predominant natural political philosophy in Latin America. It sometimes manifests itself in a rightist form, sometimes leftist, and most often a combination of the two.
Any politician that knows how to appeal to those natural populist tendencies is going to win. He won't be able to deliver on his promises, so in the end he must either repress his opponents or be replaced by yet another populist "reformer". His policies that don't work have to be ameliorated by corruption which is how unworkable systems are made to work. Its the endless pattern of South American politics.
They recently booted Oxy out of the country, and the new front-runner is threatening to change the rules of the game for those oil companies that remain. This will reduce the amount of investment in the oil fields, causing a direct reduction in government income, even if the rates go up. At some point they'll realize they are shooting themselves in the foot, and they'll reverse course, but oil companies with a long memory will remember how often they've reversed course and re-written contracts in the past, and will be hesitant to invest much. So populist economics are emotionally satisfying, but carry a heavy price tag that succeeding generations must pay with interest.
Why am I not suprised.
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