Posted on 10/17/2006 6:28:22 PM PDT by Kitten Festival
Latin America: Defying the polls, Ecuador's voters have surprised everyone by choosing a free-market presidential candidate over a radical leftist for a November runoff. It happened because Alvaro Noboa got the message out.
Before Sunday's election, front-runner Rafael Correa, slick, photogenic and way left, didn't even try to hide his puppy love for Hugo Chavez. On Ecuador's campaign trail, he extolled Chavez's "Bolivarian" ideology and openly called the Venezuelan strongman his "good friend."
Correa vowed to consolidate power as Chavez did, eliminating congress and halting free-trade talks with the U.S. "He ran a hate-U.S. campaign, calling it 'the empire,' " said Rosa Tibau Ponce, executive director of Hacia la Seguridad-Imperio de la Ley, a free market think tank in Quito.
Correa also suggested he would default on Ecuador's debt and end the U.S. dollar as Ecuador's currency, both of which would ruin a private sector that has seen its share of economic turmoil. Without irony, he denounced President Bush as "dimwitted."
The 43-year-old pretty boy claimed to be a fresh face on the political scene. ... he whipped and cracked his belt against walls, showing how he'd "put the lash" to the rickety political system.
Pre-election polls showed Correa, an ex-finance minister, ahead of a dozen other candidates with 36%. But in the official election count Tuesday afternoon, he was virtually tied at 25% with Alvaro Noboa, a businessman and heir to a banana fortune.
(Anyone who's ever eaten a blue-stickered Dole or Chiquita banana imprinted "Guayaquil" has likely tasted a product of the Noboa family business.)
In contrast to Correa, Noboa is no matinee idol. Pudgy and tired-looking, he is on his third try for the presidency. ... Campaigning in a black suit, he looked the stereotypical oligarch ... the little man on the Monopoly cards.
(Excerpt) Read more at investors.com ...
YAY!
Hugo is snubbed by another country...
Pingaroo
It appears that Li'l Hugo isn't the pop idol that our media believe him to be.
Yeah, I like watching him self-destruct on all fronts - at the UN, around his regional neighborhood and in his home country. Everywhere, everywhere, the world is rejecting Chavez, like a bad smell.
Pendulum swinging the other way?
Except that Lil Kim considers Chavez crazy.
Strange, but true. Tells us more than we wanted to know.
It's BEEN swinging the other way - Costa Rica, Colombia, Peru, Mexico, Brazil's congress, and other key states have all elected rightwingers or center-rightists. Only Bolivia is the real outlier.
Gads!
throughly = thoroughly
So the pre-election polls were wrong? I'm . . . . . shocked!
This is good news, I just hope the leftist loses big time.
Do not tell me that the polls were also wrong in Ecuador? I am shocked... Not.
It's really not a pendulum. Some writer pointed out months ago that generally, S. America is splitting into western pro-U.S. and eastern anti-U.S. halves.
The sake of the people of Ecuador, I also hope that the leftist jackass loses his butt in the election.
Amen brother.
There are pendulum effects in most South American countries, and often in South America as a whole. Over the last few decades, on the whole South America seemed to be democratizing. But there has been a return to leftist dictators in several countries in recent years. I would add Evo Morales to the list, and there is now talk that the Sandinistas may make a return to power in Nicaragua.
None of this is Bush's fault, except perhaps the failure to help Ecuadorans remove Chavez in that coup a few years back. It's just the nature of Latin American politics.
3 steps forward a times, two back others, but democracy always pushing forward.
magnifico!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.