AI
Saturday, April 16, 2005 10:55:43 AM
Ecuador President Dissolves Supreme Court
Gutierrez was elected president in November 2002 after campaigning as a populist, anti-corruption reformer. But his left-leaning constituency soon fell apart after he instituted austerity measures, including cutting subsidies on food and cooking fuel, to satisfy lenders like the International Monetary Fund.
This is the same pattern recently seen in Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan. The United States sinks countries into a debt that they cannot hope to repay until conditions worsen and a U.S. manipulated mob takes control.
IMF program was a disaster too in Ukraine ,when President Victor Yushchenko was the Prime Minister and who was dismissed by its parliament . Thanks to the IMF, Kyrgyzstan now has the largest debt per capita in Central Asia, $ 2 billion equal to its GDP .If the money goes to cronies here , so it does in Iraq ; Iraq oil revenues of many billions of US dollars to US appointed Iraqi leadership and US taxpayers easy money to Halliburtons etc..
#msg-5946297
John Perkins, author of Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, writes of Ecuador.
"The book was to be dedicated to the presidents of two countries, men who had been his clients whom I respected and thought of as kindred spirits - Jaime Roldós, president of Ecuador, and Omar Torrijos, president of Panama. Both had just died in fiery crashes. Their deaths were not accidental. They were assassinated because they opposed that fraternity of corporate, government, and banking heads whose goal is global empire. We Economic Hit Men failed to bring Roldós and Torrijos around, and the other type of hit men, the CIA-sanctioned jackals who were always right behind us, stepped in.
Well, the company I worked for was a company named Chas. T. Main in Boston, Massachusetts. We were about 2,000 employees, and I became its chief economist. I ended up having fifty people working for me. But my real job was deal-making. It was giving loans to other countries, huge loans, much bigger than they could possibly repay. One of the conditions of the loan–let's say a $1 billion to a country like Indonesia or Ecuador–and this country would then have to give ninety percent of that loan back to a U.S. company, or U.S. companies, to build the infrastructure–a Halliburton or a Bechtel. These were big ones. Those companies would then go in and build an electrical system or ports or highways, and these would basically serve just a few of the very wealthiest families in those countries. The poor people in those countries would be stuck ultimately with this amazing debt that they couldn’t possibly repay. A country today like Ecuador owes over fifty percent of its national budget just to pay down its debt. And it really can’t do it. So, we literally have them over a barrel. So, when we want more oil, we go to Ecuador and say, “Look, you're not able to repay your debts, therefore give our oil companies your Amazon rain forest, which are filled with oil.” And today we're going in and destroying Amazonian rain forests, forcing Ecuador to give them to us because they’ve accumulated all this debt. So we make this big loan, most of it comes back to the United States, the country is left with the debt plus lots of interest, and they basically become our servants, our slaves. It's an empire. There's no two ways about it. It’s a huge empire. It's been extremely successful.
#msg-4948785
-Am
Ecuador President Dissolves Supreme Court
But his left-leaning constituency soon fell apart after he instituted austerity measures, including cutting subsidies on food and cooking fuel, to satisfy lenders like the International Monetary Fund.
Updated 10:14 AM ET April 16, 2005
By MONTE HAYES
QUITO, Ecuador (AP) - President Lucio Gutierrez declared a state of emergency in the capital city of this Andean nation and dissolved the Supreme Court, saying the unpopular judges were the cause of three days of pot-banging street protests in Quito.
Although they had opposed the court that was appointed by the president's congressional allies in December, his political foes immediately labeled its summary dissolution an act of a dictator.
Speaking in a televised address to the nation Friday night with his military high command standing behind him, Gutierrez said he was using the powers granted him by the constitution to dismiss the justices. In explaining their dismissal, he said opposition to their appointments was causing the protests.
"The measure ... was taken because Congress until now has not resolved the matter of the current Supreme Court, which is generating national commotion," he said.
The state of emergency placed the military in charge of public order and suspended individual rights, including the right to free expression and public assembly.
Early Saturday, the military command went on television to give its implicit support to Gutierrez. Adm. Victor Hugo Rosero, head of the armed forces, said the only purpose of the state of emergency was "to recover the order, peace and tranquility lost during the last days."
Despite the restriction on public meetings, thousands of residents poured into Quito's streets Friday to protest the measures, shouting that Gutierrez, a former army colonel before his election in 2002, was a dictator.
"I want him to go and the congress, too. All the politicians have shown themselves to be corrupt," said Jorge Mora, 43, a civil engineer, accompanied by his 9-year-old daughter, who was waving a small yellow, blue and red Ecuadorean flag.
Quito Mayor Paco Moncayo, a retired army general and a leader of the opposition Democratic Left party, criticized the military command for supporting Gutierrez's actions. "The president can't dissolve the court. We are living in a dictatorship and this decree unmasks the dictatorship," he said. "We are calling for civil disobedience."
Street protests began Wednesday in response to an impromptu suggestion of a local radio station that residents of Quito form a nocturnal pot-banging caravan. They increased in numbers until at least 10,000 people _ banging pots and sticks and shouting "Get out, Lucio!" _ were marching in the streets as Gutierrez made his announcement Friday.
The court crisis was set in motion in November when the former justices sided with opposition politicians in a failed effort to impeach Gutierrez on corruption charges. Gutierrez then assembled a bloc of 52 lawmakers in the 100-seat unicameral congress, which voted in December to remove the judges. Legal experts said the vote ran contrary to Ecuador's constitution.
Opponents say Gutierrez cut a deal with former President Abdala Bucaram to stack the Supreme Court and clear Bucaram of corruption charges as payback for key votes Bucaram's political party provided last year blocking the impeachment drive against Gutierrez in congress.
The court cleared Bucaram of the charges and he returned to Ecuador earlier this month after eight years in exile.
In a bid to ease the political backlash, in late March Gutierrez proposed a judicial reform that would replace the new court and establish new methods for selecting judges. The legislature has not acted on the proposal.
Gutierrez was elected president in November 2002 after campaigning as a populist, anti-corruption reformer. But his left-leaning constituency soon fell apart after he instituted austerity measures, including cutting subsidies on food and cooking fuel, to satisfy lenders like the International Monetary Fund.
http://dailynews.att.net/cgi-bin/news?e=pri&dt=050416&cat=news&st=newsd89ghrfg0&src=....
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=22558
Gutierrez was elected president in November 2002 after campaigning as a populist, anti-corruption reformer. But his left-leaning constituency soon fell apart after he instituted austerity measures, including cutting subsidies on food and cooking fuel, to satisfy lenders like the International Monetary Fund.
This is the same pattern recently seen in Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan. The United States sinks countries into a debt that they cannot hope to repay until conditions worsen and a U.S. manipulated mob takes control.
IMF program was a disaster too in Ukraine ,when President Victor Yushchenko was the Prime Minister and who was dismissed by its parliament . Thanks to the IMF, Kyrgyzstan now has the largest debt per capita in Central Asia, $ 2 billion equal to its GDP .If the money goes to cronies here , so it does in Iraq ; Iraq oil revenues of many billions of US dollars to US appointed Iraqi leadership and US taxpayers easy money to Halliburtons etc..
#msg-5946297
John Perkins, author of Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, writes of Ecuador.
"The book was to be dedicated to the presidents of two countries, men who had been his clients whom I respected and thought of as kindred spirits - Jaime Roldós, president of Ecuador, and Omar Torrijos, president of Panama. Both had just died in fiery crashes. Their deaths were not accidental. They were assassinated because they opposed that fraternity of corporate, government, and banking heads whose goal is global empire. We Economic Hit Men failed to bring Roldós and Torrijos around, and the other type of hit men, the CIA-sanctioned jackals who were always right behind us, stepped in.
Well, the company I worked for was a company named Chas. T. Main in Boston, Massachusetts. We were about 2,000 employees, and I became its chief economist. I ended up having fifty people working for me. But my real job was deal-making. It was giving loans to other countries, huge loans, much bigger than they could possibly repay. One of the conditions of the loan–let's say a $1 billion to a country like Indonesia or Ecuador–and this country would then have to give ninety percent of that loan back to a U.S. company, or U.S. companies, to build the infrastructure–a Halliburton or a Bechtel. These were big ones. Those companies would then go in and build an electrical system or ports or highways, and these would basically serve just a few of the very wealthiest families in those countries. The poor people in those countries would be stuck ultimately with this amazing debt that they couldn’t possibly repay. A country today like Ecuador owes over fifty percent of its national budget just to pay down its debt. And it really can’t do it. So, we literally have them over a barrel. So, when we want more oil, we go to Ecuador and say, “Look, you're not able to repay your debts, therefore give our oil companies your Amazon rain forest, which are filled with oil.” And today we're going in and destroying Amazonian rain forests, forcing Ecuador to give them to us because they’ve accumulated all this debt. So we make this big loan, most of it comes back to the United States, the country is left with the debt plus lots of interest, and they basically become our servants, our slaves. It's an empire. There's no two ways about it. It’s a huge empire. It's been extremely successful.
#msg-4948785
-Am
Ecuador President Dissolves Supreme Court
But his left-leaning constituency soon fell apart after he instituted austerity measures, including cutting subsidies on food and cooking fuel, to satisfy lenders like the International Monetary Fund.
Updated 10:14 AM ET April 16, 2005
By MONTE HAYES
QUITO, Ecuador (AP) - President Lucio Gutierrez declared a state of emergency in the capital city of this Andean nation and dissolved the Supreme Court, saying the unpopular judges were the cause of three days of pot-banging street protests in Quito.
Although they had opposed the court that was appointed by the president's congressional allies in December, his political foes immediately labeled its summary dissolution an act of a dictator.
Speaking in a televised address to the nation Friday night with his military high command standing behind him, Gutierrez said he was using the powers granted him by the constitution to dismiss the justices. In explaining their dismissal, he said opposition to their appointments was causing the protests.
"The measure ... was taken because Congress until now has not resolved the matter of the current Supreme Court, which is generating national commotion," he said.
The state of emergency placed the military in charge of public order and suspended individual rights, including the right to free expression and public assembly.
Early Saturday, the military command went on television to give its implicit support to Gutierrez. Adm. Victor Hugo Rosero, head of the armed forces, said the only purpose of the state of emergency was "to recover the order, peace and tranquility lost during the last days."
Despite the restriction on public meetings, thousands of residents poured into Quito's streets Friday to protest the measures, shouting that Gutierrez, a former army colonel before his election in 2002, was a dictator.
"I want him to go and the congress, too. All the politicians have shown themselves to be corrupt," said Jorge Mora, 43, a civil engineer, accompanied by his 9-year-old daughter, who was waving a small yellow, blue and red Ecuadorean flag.
Quito Mayor Paco Moncayo, a retired army general and a leader of the opposition Democratic Left party, criticized the military command for supporting Gutierrez's actions. "The president can't dissolve the court. We are living in a dictatorship and this decree unmasks the dictatorship," he said. "We are calling for civil disobedience."
Street protests began Wednesday in response to an impromptu suggestion of a local radio station that residents of Quito form a nocturnal pot-banging caravan. They increased in numbers until at least 10,000 people _ banging pots and sticks and shouting "Get out, Lucio!" _ were marching in the streets as Gutierrez made his announcement Friday.
The court crisis was set in motion in November when the former justices sided with opposition politicians in a failed effort to impeach Gutierrez on corruption charges. Gutierrez then assembled a bloc of 52 lawmakers in the 100-seat unicameral congress, which voted in December to remove the judges. Legal experts said the vote ran contrary to Ecuador's constitution.
Opponents say Gutierrez cut a deal with former President Abdala Bucaram to stack the Supreme Court and clear Bucaram of corruption charges as payback for key votes Bucaram's political party provided last year blocking the impeachment drive against Gutierrez in congress.
The court cleared Bucaram of the charges and he returned to Ecuador earlier this month after eight years in exile.
In a bid to ease the political backlash, in late March Gutierrez proposed a judicial reform that would replace the new court and establish new methods for selecting judges. The legislature has not acted on the proposal.
Gutierrez was elected president in November 2002 after campaigning as a populist, anti-corruption reformer. But his left-leaning constituency soon fell apart after he instituted austerity measures, including cutting subsidies on food and cooking fuel, to satisfy lenders like the International Monetary Fund.
http://dailynews.att.net/cgi-bin/news?e=pri&dt=050416&cat=news&st=newsd89ghrfg0&src=....
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=22558
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