Ecuador’s Correa condemns right-wing coup plot

Stuart Munckton
Green Left Weekly, 22 January 2010

Left-wing Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa said that a conspiracy to destabilise his country, funded by the right-wing factions in the United States, has been uncovered, a January 4 Juventud Rebelde article said.

During a television broadcast, Correa said: “Since they know they cannot beat us at the polls and that if tomorrow we were to hold an election we would win again … they are trying to confuse the military and police to turn them against the
government.”

Correa was first elected in 2006 on a platform of carrying out a pro-poor “citizen’s revolution”. Since then, the government has created anti-poverty social missions, increased the minimum wage, increased taxes on large oil companies, defaulted on Ecuador’s illegitimate foreign debt and, through an elected constituent assembly, created a new constitution approved by a referendum that extends the rights of the oppressed.

Last year, Ecuador also joined the anti-imperialist Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas political and trading bloc, which was formed by the revolutionary Venezuelan and Cuban governments.

In June last year, the elected Honduran President Manuel Zelaya, whose government had joined ALBA and implemented some pro-poor reforms, was overthrown in a coup led by US-trained military officers.

Correa said that certain sectors of the Ecuadorian Armed Forces are implicated in the
conspiracy to carry-out what he called a “Honduran-style” coup.