Council On Hemispheric Affairs
MONITORING POLITICAL, ECONOMIC AND DIPLOMATIC
ISSUES AFFECTING THE WESTERN HEMISPHERE
Thursday, May 17th, 2007
During his recently concluded visit to Washington, Ecuador’s highly regarded attorney general, José Xavier Garaicoa
Ortiz, privately met with the Council on Hemispheric Affairs’ (COHA) editorial board to discuss current issues affecting
his country. The ground rules of that meeting were that no public statement would be issued until the attorney general
returned to Ecuador. The Ecuadorian attorney general was in Washington to participate in preliminary hearings before the
International Centre for the Settlement of Investment Disputes, under the auspices of the World Bank, to facilitate the
mediation of the dispute between Ecuador and the U.S. multinational oil company, Occidental Petroleum. The company is
seeking to invalidate the government’s cancellation of a contract allowing for the exploration and production of oil
which Ecuador says was properly abrogated by actions of the company.
Garaicoa began by focusing on President Rafael Correa’s recent battle with the country’s fractious legislature and parts
of the court system. Here, Garaicoa rhetorically asked which of the country’s instruments of government has been more
responsive to the popular will. He went on to criticize the controversial U.S. military presence at the Manta airbase
(arranged by one of President Correa’s predecessors) and confirmed that the president has stated that he will not extend
the lease on the facility, which is up for renewal in 2009. The Ecuadorian president has based his position on Manta
mainly on the grounds that there is substantial domestic opposition to the presence of any foreign military base in
Ecuador, emphasizing that it was not aimed at the United States in particular.
The base was originally promoted to the Ecuadorian people as a vehicle for the country’s economic development, providing
an opportunity that would result in new foreign investments and jobs coming to the region. But the past eight years of
its operation have rendered drastically different results. Garaicoa noted that the use of the base as a staging ground
for anti-guerrilla activities in support of Colombia’s government put Ecuador at risk of being drawn into that conflict,
something neither the Correa government nor the people of Ecuador favor. At the end of his interview, Garaicoa lamented,
“Manta has never filled the role it was originally intended to.”
In a country where voting is obligatory and where legislators are elected by popular vote, Attorney General Garaicoa
insisted that President Correa remains Ecuador’s only elected official who effectively represents the popular will of
the entire citizenry. “No existe un Congreso Nacional” (“There is no national congress”), asserted Garaicoa, emphasizing that the current law and constitution are basically
marred, so that both the powers of the elected Congress and the checks and balances among the branches of government are
unclear. In this respect, Correa plans to lead efforts to rewrite the constitution beginning in September because the
current lack of clarity has allowed the populace to be under-represented, to the benefit of the more privileged elements
of the citizenry as well as the other branches of the government. Consequently, the legislative and court systems have
been acting in a manner that has invalidated their legitimacy in the eyes of the people. Ecuador’s transformative
referendum held last month, where the president’s proposal was backed by 81.7% of voters, has convinced many Ecuadorian
specialists that Correa’s recent actions are indeed fully in line with the expectations of a majority of the electorate.
The referendum also proved that Ecuadorians were overwhelmingly in favor of a constituent assembly that would begin the
process of effectively rewriting the constitution in September.
*************
This analysis was prepared by COHA Research Associate Laura Wayne
May 17th, 2007
Word Count: 600
The Council on Hemispheric Affairs, founded in 1975, is an independent, non-profit, non-partisan, tax-exempt research
and information organization. It has been described on the Senate floor as being “one of the nation’s most respected
bodies of scholars and policy makers.” For more information, please see our web page at www.coha.org; or contact our
Washington offices by phone (202) 223-4975, fax (202) 223-4979, or email coha@coha.org.