[DEBATE] : (Fwd) Ecuador update: Prez-elect Correa's first steps

[Patrick Bond]

http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/world/archives/2006/11/30/2003338530

Rafael Correa declared winner in Ecuador
AFP, QUITO Thursday, Nov 30, 2006

Correa's goals

* The president-elect wants banks to bring the billions of dollars they
deposited in US banks in Miami back home.

* He wants to renegotiate the country's foreign debt.

* Ecuador will apply to rejoin OPEC.

* He wants to allow the lease on a US air base to lapse.


Flush from his electoral victory, leftist Rafael Correa said on Tuesday 
that as
president he will tighten banking regulations to stop capital flight, 
but that
he does not plan to seize private property.

Hours after the country's Supreme Electoral Tribunal declared him the 
official
winner of Sunday's runoff election, Correa said he wanted Ecuadoran banks to
retrieve some US$2 billion they have deposited in US banks in Miami, 
Florida.

"I want them to bring that money back and set up a system of credits, 
like the
banking system should do, and start a common fund," the 43-year-old 
economist
told Ecuavisa TV.

"They want us to get on our knees begging for foreign investment when 
our own
banks send money to Miami. We're financing foreigners and that's 
unacceptable,"
he said.

Correa said that when he begins his four-year mandate on Jan. 15, he 
will push
for banking reforms to set a limit on how much money can be deposited 
outside
the country.

"We'll put a tax on foreign speculation. Yes, foreign speculation of all 
shapes
and forms must stop ... including capital flight," he said, signaling 
foreign
direct investment is welcome.

However, Correa went out of his way to quash rumors that as a left-wing
politician he plans to seize private property.

"The only ones seizing anything, in the strict sense of the term `property,'
are the bankers and financial speculators when they froze banking 
accounts in
1999," he said.

Former president Jamil Mahuad that year froze all banking accounts to avert
major financial hemorrhage after a banking crisis sapped an estimated US$5
billion from the economy.

Correa won Sunday's election by a 58-42 percent margin against conservative
banana tycoon Alvaro Noboa, with 90.1 percent of votes tallied.

His election marked another blow to Washington's hope to retain its level of
influence in the region, and came on the heels of the electoral comeback in
Nicaragua of Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega.

On Monday, Correa said he would seek stronger ties with Venezuela, oppose a
free-trade deal with the US and let lapse the lease for a US military 
air base
on Ecuador's Pacific Coast.

On celebrating his triumph Monday, Correa called out, "until victory 
always" --
the slogan of late iconic revolutionary leader Ernesto "Che" Guevara -- to
cheers from thousands of supporters.

He announced that Ecuador, which produces more than 540,000 barrels of crude
oil a day, would apply to rejoin the OPEC, which it quit in 1992.

Correa has made financial markets uneasy with his calls to revise 
foreign oil
companies' contracts in Ecuador, renegotiate the nation's foreign debt and
expel the World Bank representative.

Describing himself as a "humanist, leftist Christian," Correa says he
represents the "new Latin American left."


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