Reuters: "Ecuador's poor majority back referendum"

Ecuador's poor majority backs Correa's referendum

By Alonso Soto

REUTERS

8:02 a.m. April 12, 2007

QUITO – In Ecuador's shantytowns, where stray dogs rifle through garbage and mud-caked children in torn clothes play soccer on dirt tracks, supporting the president's constitutional reform plans is a way to hit back at the old elite. Polls predict Ecuadoreans will Sunday overwhelmingly back a proposal by leftist President Rafael Correa to set up an assembly to rewrite the constitution, a move that could curb the powers of a Congress widely seen as self-serving.

“He is going to change things in this country, because he can outsmart all those corrupt politicians,” said truck-driver Manuel Ordonez, 45, in Quito's crime-ridden slum of Pisuli.

“The assembly will bring the change we need,” he said, perched on the roof of his dingy one-room home where his mother was boiling a corn-cob for dinner.

Correa, who took office in January, says the proposed assembly could cut the influence of congressmen in the Andean nation's judiciary and state companies, and force them to live in the poor constituencies they represent.

In Pisuli, which clings to a bleak hillside overlooking a glitzy residential district, many are unsure what the new assembly would do but back it as the brainchild of the dashing, charismatic Correa. “I see hope in him, hope we never had,” said Gloria Sanchez, 57, a tiny mother of five who collects scrap metal for a living. “I really don't know what a new assembly can do, but we need change. I trust Correa,” she added, impervious to a chill, misty drizzle soaking the world's second-highest capital.

Although a Cedatos-Gallup poll found 63 percent of voters in the world's top banana exporter would back the new assembly, 98 percent did not fully understand what powers it would have.

If Ecuadoreans vote “yes” Sunday, there will be an election for assembly members later this year, most likely in September or October.

CHAVEZ ALLY

Correa, an ally of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, has ruffled Wall Street with his vows to renegotiate oil deals and the national debt.

But while the opposition warns in television campaigns that Correa is turning into a dictator and centering power around himself like Chavez, poncho-clad Indians have marched through poor mountain hamlets with placards saying “Vote Yes”.

“Correa is the new outsider who battles the establishment and that has made him very attractive for Ecuadoreans,” said Carlos Cordova, a pollster with Cedatos-Gallup.

“People identify with him and he is still enjoying his honeymoon after only three months on the job. His popularity is fueling support for the assembly in Sunday's referendum.” But analysts warn that Correa could run into trouble if old foes such as former President Lucio Gutierrez, who was ousted in 2005 amid street protests and turmoil in Congress, get a strong foothold in the assembly, or if powerful Indian groups feel sidelined.

Ecuadorean politics are extremely volatile and Correa is the eighth president in a decade. Even the decision to hold the referendum sparked a bitter dispute in which lawmakers were fired and fought with the police.

Three presidents have been ousted by congressional and popular unrest in the last 10 years.

Michael Shifter, a Latin America analyst at the Inter-American Dialogue think-tank, said playing the populist card might not end Ecuador's hair-trigger volatility as Correa wants.

“I'm not sure the constituent assembly is the solution to Ecuador's fragmentation, particularity for the way Correa antagonizes the political forces,” he said.

“Correa's confrontational style may play well politically but not solve the country's instability.”

VOA: Ecuador Referendum May Bring Sweeping Government Changes"

By Brian Wagner
Miami
13 April 2007

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Voters in Ecuador are to cast ballots Sunday on whether to create a constituent assembly to write a new constitution for the Andean nation. In Miami, VOA's Brian Wagner reports approval of the referendum is essential to the new government of President Rafael Correa, who has promised sweeping political changes.

<—President Rafael Correa delivers a speech from the balcony of the Government Palace in Quito, 28 Mar 2007

Ecuador's president, Rafael Correa, has been promoting the constitutional referendum as a way to end decades of corruption and government inefficiency.

He hopes the process will restructure the congress and end the dominance of existing political parties, blamed for recent government instability. Correa also wants to strengthen the role of the presidency to renegotiate what he says are unfair deals with international creditors and foreign oil companies.

Sunday, voters will have a chance to decide whether to embark on the president's sweeping reform process, explains Terry McCoy, political science professor at the University of Florida.

"I think he's got pretty big ambitions and plans in mind. He'd like to completely remake the Ecuadorian political system," he said. "I think most people would agree that's a good thing, because it's highly dysfunctional and institutionally weak."

Critics say constant battles between Ecuador's political parties have prevented lawmakers and officials from tackling key problems in recent years, such as poverty and the distribution of oil wealth.

Shelley McConnell, senior associate director of the Americas program at the Carter Center, says rewriting the constitution may help break with the past.

"You have an opportunity for consensus building around a national agenda and a new set of structures," she said. "But it's also a risky moment, because we're talking about the distribution of political power and resources, and those are hard fought things."

Already Mr. Correa has fought several political battles with parties opposed to the referendum. Earlier this year, opposition lawmakers moved to impeach him over the proposed vote, sparking a dispute that led to the firing of 57 opposition legislators.

Polls show the referendum is likely to win approval on Sunday, mainly because of public dissatisfaction with Ecuador's political parties and recent instability - it has had eight presidents in the past 10 years.

Mr. Correa has sought to distance himself from existing parties and portray himself as a relative newcomer to politics. Raul Madrid, associate professor of government at the University of Texas at Austin, says it may be unrealistic to replace the nation's entire political structure.

"There are lots of problems in the country. What we don't know is to what degree these changes will solve those problems, or will they simply impose a new system of corrupt, inefficient elites," he said.

One of Mr. Correa's biggest political allies comes from outside the country: Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez. Mr. Correa has said he is close friends with the leftist Venezuelan leader, but he does not subscribe to his program of socialist reforms.

Hugo Chavez —>

Since taking office in Venezuela in 1999, Mr. Chavez oversaw the writing of a new constitution for his country and has called for other reforms that are similar to those being considered in Ecuador.

Madrid says that Mr. Chavez has become a model for leftist leaders, including Mr. Correa and Bolivia's President Evo Morales.

"Chavez is viewed by Morales and Correa as being fairly effective in his ability to get done what he wants to get done, and I think they're copying his methods," he said.

Bolivia has elected a constitutional assembly to write a new government charter, and officials in Nicaragua also have proposed the idea. Shelley McConnell of the Carter Center says there is a clear trend in the region.

"I think the demands for change are genuinely domestic to the countries where they are taking place," she said. "There is a broad debate about what democracy should look like."

If Ecuadorian voters approve the referendum on Sunday, a constituent assembly will be selected and installed by October. The assembly then will have at least six months to draft a new government charter, which voters then would have a chance to approve or reject in a new ballot.

Opinion: The "Hot-Air" Debate on Iraq

Here's another great "polemic" on Iraq from my good friend Curt Jones. (Click here to read his previous posting on this blog.) Curt is a retired foreign service officer who spent practically all of his thirty year career in the Middle East. Now a leading expert on the region, he's a relentless critic of the Bush administration's Iraq and Palestine policies, but he faults the Democrats just as severely for their failure to pose a serious challenge to those policies.*

THE HOT-AIR DEBATE
Surge versus Redeploy Equals Zero

       Congress is perpetrating another fraud. This time the issue is Iraq. The debate is intense, but off-target: The result is nonbinding, and both sides are missing the point.

       From the surgers, we hear irrelevant allusions to the American Revolution, the Civil War, and the resolve and sacrifice that made America great. Worse, they are recycling the myth about “Islamic fascism” while avoiding the elementary fact that the illegal and misguided invasion was the original sin.

       From the redeployers, we hear desperate efforts to clothe disengagement in artful phrases that don’t sound like surrender, backed by overoptimistic expressions of hope that the challenge will galvanize the Maliki government into taking charge of a situation that may have gotten out of any faction’s control.

       Neither side tells us the truth, because we voters have never been good at swallowing bad news. Politicians avoid it like the plague. No one is going to admit that an American soldier died in vain. But after four years, three thousand deaths on 9/ll, tens of thousands of deaths in Iraq, and three million Iraqi refugees, the time is long past to bite the bullet: American policy in the Middle East is imperialist, and imperialism always loses.

       It started with oil: Back in 1945, FDR made a seemingly innocuous promise to protect Saudi Arabia in return for an inside track to Saudi oil. Today, that promise has snowballed into security guarantees to seven precarious regimes, backed by an overwhelming complex of ground, air, and naval installations across the Middle East.

       In 1948, America orchestrated the insertion of a Jewish state into a non-Jewish environment. As the inevitable Arab-Iranian-Israeli conflict escalated over the years, American support for Israel escalated in synchrony, until their foreign policies were inextricable. Whenever Israel went to war, America joined in – though generally behind the scenes.

       On December 26, 1991, the Russian flag replaced the hammer and sickle over the Kremlin, and America awoke to the realization that it was the last superpower left standing. Statesmen would have seized that opportunity to enlist the new American colossus in the cause of international comity, but America’s leaders of the time were politicians; they seized the opportunity for aggrandizement of parochial American interests. In September 2002 President George W. Bush issued “The National Security Strategy of the United States” – a blueprint for world domination. It professes dedication to freedom, but it is couched in the chauvinist rhetoric of triumphalism.

       In this spirit, America has staked a partisan claim to Middle East oil, underwritten preeminence of Jewish rights over Arab rights in Palestine, and waged a campaign to promote docile regimes across the Middle East.

       In March 2003, this campaign culminated in the disastrous effort to change the regime in Iraq. There’s nothing we can do about that now. Iraq is out of American control. Our problem is to get the troops out. The operative questions are how soon and how far.

       If you’re a politician, timing is everything. When disaster looms, you do your best to stave it off until you’re out of office. As for redeployment, reasonable observers have expressed the hope that we might be able to confine the conflagration to Iraq by maintaining military readiness around the periphery. This strategy is not promising. Someday the United States will choose to take all its ground troops out of the Middle East.

       For now, let’s quash those rumors of American and/or Israeli preemption – possibly even nuclear – against Iran. If Washington starts to display signs of dementia, the public has an existential interest in taking corrective action.

* Curtis Jones is the author of Divide and Perish, the Geopolitics of the Middle East (AuthorHouse 2006).

In Niger, "Trees Turn Back the Desert"— but it's too soon to celebrate

Ambassador James Bullington astonished his foreign service colleagues (including me) when he marked his retirement at the end of a 37-year career as a diplomat by signing up with Peace Corps to run its program in Niger, one of Africa's poorest countries. After reading the New York Times' interesting and hopeful piece on Niger* last Sunday, I asked Jim how well it matched what he had learned about the country during his six sun-burnt years there. Here is his response, plus two of his own photos:

The New York Times article on the greening of the desert in Niger is a welcome change from the gloomy reports of famine, disease, war and other disasters that dominate news reports from Africa. It's backed by what seems to be good scientific evidence, and it's consistent with what I saw during my time as Peace Corps Director in Niger, 2000-2006. Perhaps the best news in the article is that this progress in reclaiming areas that fell barren due to desertification has been achieved by simple, low cost methods undertaken by ordinary farmers, not by a massive (and probably unsustainable) government project.

The article is less than satisfyingly informative, however, on how millions of illiterate farmers were inspired to protect existing trees and were given the rudimentary skills needed to reclaim land that has turned into hardpan and plant new trees on it. In fact, this has been a decades-long process facilitated by the Niger Government (with regional tree nurseries and arbor day campaigns), and fostered especially by more than 3000 American Peace Corps Volunteers who have lived in Nigerien villages and promoted tree planting and other conservation techniques over the past 45 years. Peace Corps remains very active in Niger, with about 120 Volunteers working today alongside poor rural people in extraordinarily harsh conditions. They are highly appreciated by the people they serve, and by the Nigerien Government, but they receive little credit from Americans and little notice by the American media.

Also, in spite of the very good news that the long-term southward creep of the Sahara seems to have been halted or even reversed in Niger during the past few years, we need to bear in mind that this is only one of the problems besetting this poorest of the world's countries. (It ranks 177 out of 177 countries covered in the United Nations Development Program's 2006 Human Development Index.) An even worse problem, for example, is uncontrolled population growth, which has been running at 3.3% to 3.6% annually for decades and shows no signs of moderating. This means that the population doubles every 20 years or so. In 1960, it was only 3 million. Today, it is 14 million, and it is projected to reach 23 million by 2020. Consequently, per capita GDP has been falling steadily, and most Nigeriens are even poorer today than they were in the 1960s.

Moreover, while land reclamation and more trees are certainly useful, they can't even solve the problems of water availability and soil fertility, much less cope with global warming. Water tables have continued to drop throughout most of Niger, as water is drawn off to support the growing human and animal demands; and per-hectare yields of millet and other food crops are falling as increasingly marginal land is brought under cultivation.

Although the good news of a greener Niger is most welcome, any tendency to celebrate should be restrained by the grim realities of intractable problems and poor prospects. Niger needs a lot more help, over many years, if it is to be lifted from its grinding poverty.

*Lead photo by Michael Kanber for The New York Times

NY Times: "Ambush Kills an American Teaching Democracy to Iraqis"

I'm deeply saddened this evening to learn of the deaths of not just one but four persons affiliated with the National Democratic Institute, in an ambush in Baghdad on Wednesday. Ironically, they were gunned down after teaching a class in elemental principles of democracy to Iraqi political leaders—the very sort of work everyone hopes will help bind up the country's deep wounds.

The tragedy is especially poignant for me personally, inasmuch as my daughter Lauren served in Baghdad until only a few weeks ago, in a capacity not unlike the victims'—living and working outside the so-called Green Zone and attempting to help Iraqis put their battered country back together again. Thank God she is now safely returned home.

One of Lauren's friends in Baghdad who knew three of the victims personally forwarded to her a moving tribute composed in their honor:

REQUIEM ZELJKO, RASSIM, JANOS, ANDREA

A question is always raised in such an occasion as how to best commemorate the memory of our fallen or departed. (I have never met Andrea so I cannot touch on this topic.)

Due to the war in Croatia there is a well defined military protocol for just such an incident. I do not believe these protocols would correctly reflect on the lives of Rassim, Janos and likewise for Zeljko. We live on a day to day basis and I believe the following verse would better reflect their lives.

Croatian soldiers before their deployment would often sing together sorrowful songs which would bond them together in a spirit of hope. They knew quite well that shortly on their missions they may face peril. These songs are now rarely sung as they slowly remitted once the war had ended; as a result I never learnt these songs except for one verse which rings in my mind. These songs where sung as prayers before such deployments and Zeljko knew these songs. The verse which as I can recall that Zeljko had sung before was as such:

“my life was short and passed as a dream,
and if I could wish for but one thing,
I would wish that I could live for but one more day”

When I remember my following three comrades, colleagues, and companions of mine I am filled with fond and happy memories of all of them. It still hasn’t dawned on me that I will never see these friends again. I am sure that shortly this reality will be indomitable. It was only upon reading about Zeljko’s death in Croatian script that my stomach churned and brought home the sadness and reality of losing Zeljko and my other two friends.

The best way by which we can commemorate such friends is by keeping our memories of them alive. For those who have met Janos, Rassim and Zeljko before I wish that you may keep your memories of them as they where.

For those that did not know the fallen I testify:

Janos I knew the least as I only meet him for a period of a few months. It took me at least one rotation to distinguish between Jan and Janos as they both did not drink and where very rarely seen in the Bunker. Janos was rotated into our team after coming off Venue Security. He was a very quite and pleasant person who had difficulty in communicating in English but tried immensely. There was talk of having Janos dismissed due to his lack of English. Ivo had faith in Janos and took him into to his team as the SAP car commander. When Wessie was traveling with this team he did not recognise the voice over the SAP radio and upon enquire was quite shocked and impressed to hear how well Janos had progressed in ‘command and signals’ English usage. I have had the pleasure to work with Janos on several occasions.

Rassim was like a friendly elder brother to me. A man who I always treated as an equal and always showed respect to his seniority. He spent twenty years in Saddam’s army and worked in the Iraqi consulate for three years in Belgrade the result of which he could speak Serbian. He and I would joke continuously on the issues of the world in hybrid languages which no one could understand except the two of us. We have always worked closely together and I have always taken on his advice. I have never raised my voice at him as there has never been fault to do so. Rassim has taught me many valuable lessons of life and human nature. We have shared personal discussions on family matters and other intimate topics. I will miss his counsel. He leaves behind a widow and two sons. His brother a mechanic was also unfortunately brutally executed.

Zeljko I first met in the army as an instructor. Zeljko was respected amongst the candidates as he was considered to be a decent human being committed to always improving the present state. My impression of Zeljko was that he did not want to waste any ones time. In the future we would end up in the same unit of the air troop, in the same squad. Zeljko was disappointed in the military and discharged and tried his hand at de-mining in Croatia. As this job was full of internal problems he also left this calling instead to provide security in Iraq. Zeljko and I arrived on the same plane inbound for Iraq. We eventually ended up in the same team where I learnt from him and respected his opinions and views on low profile tactics. We would often discuss in detail the innumerable possibilities during convoys. We would never be in disagreement, argue or conflict. We have never been on ill terms and he is a person who I could openly confide in. Zeljko had his own unique sense of humor which can never be misinterpreted as sarcastic or disdainful but rather realisitic. He has contributed much to the Cedar team and was an admirable team leader.

The team that got hit was my former team and I will miss the departed all dearly as will others. As I did not know Andrea this does not make her passing any easier and I am sure that she will be appropriately commemorated.

Least we forget!

"Getting it Right in Iraq"

My good friend and highly respected colleague Curt Jones has argued for more than a decade that our strong-arm approach to Iraq and Saddam Hussein was fatally flawed. Now it appears that even President George Bush has come to the same conclusion, although he hasn't given up hope entirely that one more "surge" of American troops might salvage his policy. Curt Jones, who spent a good part of his professional life in and around Iraq as a U.S. foreign service officer, believes Bush's eleventh hour attempt to impose peace and democracy on Iraq through military force is doomed to fail. He summarizes his reasons as follows:

American policy for the Middle East (northeast Africa and southwest Asia) has long suffered from pathological aversion to compromise, and mistaken reliance on unilateral coercion. Some of the more egregious examples:

• Overthrow of an elected Iranian Prime Minister in 1953.
• Failed attempt to buy a coup in Syria in 1957.
• Logistic and intelligence support for Iraq against Iran in the 1980’s.
• Engagement on the Israeli side of the Lebanese conflict in 1983.
• Black Hawk Down in Somalia in 1993.
• Invasion of Iraq in 2003.
• Political and logistic support for the Israeli campaign against Lebanon in 2006
• Current support for the Ethiopian intervention in Somalia.

American interventionism has been facilitated by construction of a hypertrophic base structure across the area, anchored by Fifth Fleet headquarters in Bahrain, Centcom’s air base in Qatar, an expansive staging area in Kuwait, and unpublicized bases in Afghanistan, Central Asia, and Iraq.

So far, at least, the culmination of American militance was the invasion of Iraq. In November 2006 the American electorate gave evidence of general recognition that that enterprise has failed and should be terminated. The Bush administration seems determined to press on, and its dedication to an American solution is still winning endorsement in some academic circles.

Foreign Affairs of January/February 2007 carries Thomas L. McNaugher’s review of War Made New by Max Boot and Finding the Target by Frederick W. Kagan. McNaugher joins those two authors in a discussion that seems to focus on military solutions to problems that can be remedied only by political means. Aside from Kagan’s observations that “planners should start with a vision of the political outcome they want to achieve,” and that if they had done so for Iraq, “the very operation itself might have been called into question,” the argument ascribed to Boot and Kagan, as encapsulated by McNaugher, ignores the all-important political aspect of the equation. We are invited to infer that the secret to winding up our business in Iraq and winning the “war on terrorism” lies in reforming American military structure and strategy.

This approach falls short in at least three respects:

First, it conflates two unrelated problems (pacification of Iraq, suppression of Islamist subversion) that require separate policies.

Second, although the future of Iraq will probably be determined by military conflict, the only relevant forces will be indigenous – presumably Iraqi. There is no valid role for any partisan foreign force, except for the obligation on America – having made the mistake of intervening -- to withdraw in a manner best calculated to minimize the risk to its troops and to Iraqis identified with them. Washington will have to abandon the conventional view that its forces have some ethical or national-security responsibility to try to calibrate the outcome.

Third, Islamist subversion is not susceptible to a military solution. “Fighting the enemy over there so we don’t have to over here” makes no sense. Elimination of bin Ladins and Islamist bases is a palliative. The solution to anti-American subversion is remediation of the intrusive and/or exploitive policies that generate it.

Former National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft joins the discussion in an article in The New York Times of January 4. His assessment that “we can’t walk away from chaos in Iraq” sounds like a timid paraphrase of “stay the course.” The nonpartisan Iraqi troops postulated by Scowcroft do not exist. American withdrawal may precipitate full-scale civil war, and possible intervention by neighboring states, but these contingencies are the inevitable hazards imposed by the longstanding regional power vacuum, as distorted by past British and American interference in Middle Eastern affairs.

We can hope that the Iraqis will hit on a miraculous formula for national stabilization. The responsibility is theirs, not ours. American troops will not be in Iraq forever.