Ecuadorean president: Congress should be dissolved by constitutional assembly

SignOnSanDiego, June 23, 2007

QUITO, Ecuador – Ecuador's president toughened his stance against Congress on Saturday, saying that a special assembly elected to write a new constitution for the politically turbulent country should dissolve the lawmaking body.

“I thought the constituent assembly wouldn't have to dissolve Congress ... but with this kind of Congress we're not going to be able to do anything,” Rafael Correa said in his weekly radio address.

The assembly “will have to dissolve Congress,” he said.

Earlier this year, Correa's insistence that the 130-member assembly, which Ecuadoreans are scheduled to elect on Sept. 30, have the power to dissolve the lawmaking body and dismiss any elected official, drove the country into a legal crisis that left Congress closed for more than a month.

He later softened his stance, saying the assembly should only limit Congress' functions.

Correa, whose party holds no seats in Congress, has called the lawmaking body “a sewer of corruption” and blamed the traditional political parties for much of Ecuador's instability.

Ecuador's eighth president in a decade, Correa has vowed to write a new constitution to reduce the power of the “political mafia” he says runs the country. The need for the assembly was overwhelmingly approved in a national referendum in April.