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Council on
Hemispheric Affairs |
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Monitoring Political, Economic and Diplomatic Issues Affecting the
Western Hemisphere |
| COHA Memorandum
to the Press 06.64 |
Word Count: 1100 |
Ecuadorean
Elections: Correa's Most Surprising, Most Important Victory
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This analysis was prepared by COHA
Director Dr. Larry Birns
Monday November 27nd, 2006
- The Pink Tide resumes its South American course
- A major defeat for U.S. regional diplomacy
- Malign neglect does not work when it comes to advancing genuine U.S.
national interests
The astonishing comeback of Rafael Correa from what appeared
to be a definitive first round defeat marks one of the
most extraordinary reversals of the political fate of
a South American leader within memory. Correa’s victory
also represents a significant triumph for the average
Ecuadorean who refused to be beguiled by Álvaro
Noboa’s well-fueled, so-called populist, but splash-dash
campaign. In a poor country like Ecuador, Noboa’s unparalleled
expenditure of money – some of it handed out personally
by him – was a hardly-concealed effort to buy an election.
Meanwhile, Correa ran an issue-oriented campaign centered
on alleviating the dead-end plight of the nation’s poor.
As important as any other aspect of the presidential race
was that its outcome represented a stinging defeat for Washington’s
Latin American policy, which already had hit rock bottom
throughout the Bush presidency. Key U.S. policies like free
trade, privatization and market integration, anti-drug trafficking,
increased regional military presence, and the pursuit of
isolating Cuba and Venezuela, were being challenged and dismissed
as being irrelevant.
The White House has touted recent elections in Mexico and
Peru as a sharp defeat for the “Pink Tide” movement of left-leaning
governments in the Americas (Brazil, Venezuela, Bolivia,
Uruguay, Argentina and, to an extent, Chile). But the more
recent victories of leftist candidates Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua
(after a blatant intervention scheme led by U.S. Ambassador
in Managua Paul Trivelli), and now Rafael Correa in Ecuador,
represent a humiliating rebuke for Washington’s chief goals.
Full
article...
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