The President and his Critics

Supporters of Correa during one of his rallies (from Andes).

This Sunday Ecuador will hold presidential and legislative elections. Rafael Correa is looking for his second reelection. He first came to the Presidency in 2007, and won his second term in the early contest of 2009 (a new Constitution was approved a year earlier, which required a new presidential election); it had been thirty years since the last incumbent was reelected. Now, it seems almost certain that Correa will have another four-year term in office. He is in the first place of the last published polls, with around 60% of electors’ preferences. He is followed by Guillermo Lasso, candidate of the brand-new liberal Creating Opportunities party, who would receive between 8 and 20% of the vote. The electoral law provides that if the candidate with the most votes has at least 40% of them and a distance of 10% of the total vote with his closest competitor, there is no need for a runoff. This seems to be the case now.

Otherwise said, Correa is a very popular president. And this impression is not just built just on the surface thanks to an effective campaign to build a good public image (although this term also appears in the equation). The Ecuadorian electorate appreciates that he has brought political stability and economic bonanza after the crisis that began under the government of Abdalá Bucaram (1996-1997), who was forced to resign by the Congress. High oil prices have allowed him to fund ambitious social programs aimed at poverty reduction and education expansion. Furthermore, he has promoted environment protection policies which have garnered international recognition. As Hugo Chávez, he labels his actions “21^st Century Socialism”. Expectedly, this has two effects. Some people praise him as the new image of the left in South America, without falling in the excesses of the Venezuelan President; others, mostly those who support a free-market, despise him and accuse him of being a populist and of clearly taking Ecuador by the path of Venezuela.

However, in his very probable third term in office Correa will face a domestic challenge. Colleagues from the left have criticized him for some years, accusing him of leaving aside the principles of his “Green Revolution”. In particular, they seem to agree with the critics from the right: without phrasing it in these terms, they fear that he is showing some disturbing similarities with Hugo Chávez. For instance, his over-insistence on financing an each time larger share of the state expenditures with oil. Or the reform introduced last year which prohibited the media from making “direct or indirect promotion […] that could have a positive or negative incidence in favor or against any candidate”, which has been read as a wall against freedom of expression. Or filling vacant positions in the courts with judges clearly loyal to him, move that some people have identified as an attack against the separation of powers.

Thus, some analysts think that Correa’s most important task will be to maintain the unity of the left he says to head but that has shown to have disagreements with him. If all things remain equal, he might not need his former allies. But oil prices could fall, the opposition could articulate a more attractive discourse, or he could change his mind and reverse the measure that protects some national parks from exploitation for resource extraction (allegedly, the necessary infrastructure is already in place). In the early stages of his government, he could rely on positive expectations about him to receive support. Now, he has to provide outputs in order to avoid having to ask for approval.