[Lasa] Ecuador’s Referendum Reveals a Fragmented Country

[Marc Becker]

Ecuador’s Referendum Reveals a Fragmented Country

Written by Marc Becker
Tuesday, 17 May 2011 20:44
Upside Down World
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/ecuador-archives-49/3035-ecuadors-referendum-reveals-a-fragmented-country

On May 7, Ecuadorians voted in a referendum on ten questions ranging 
through constitution, judicial, political, and social issues. In the 
run-up to the vote many observers cast the election as a plebiscite on 
president Rafael Correa’s four years in office, a test of his 
popularity, and on his prospects of winning reelection in 2013, rather 
than a contest over any specific issue that the referendum raised. More 
than anything, however, the referendum revealed the deeply fragmented 
nature of the country.

Exit polls initially indicated that Rafael Correa had walked away with 
his sixth sequential electoral victory since initially winning the 
presidency in 2006. Social movement activists and leftist dissidents who 
had long since broken with Correa, however, quickly insisted that the 
exit polling firms had distorted the data to create an impression of 
Correa’s invincibility. The race was much closer than some believed, 
they contended, and the referendum had in reality lost in some eastern 
Amazonian provinces.

Even though Correa declared triumph after the close of the polls, the 
initial electoral returns indicated a slim margin of victory and perhaps 
even a rejection of two of the ten questions in the referendum. The 
president accused electoral officials of collaborating with opposition 
figures and intentionally counting provinces where he had the least 
amount of support first in order to create an atmosphere of doubt and 
chaos. Nevertheless, almost a week later official returns still painted 
the same picture. In the end, it appeared that all ten questions would 
be approved, but with less than a 50 percent vote in favor of each one.

For Correa, a clear and strong political rationale fueled his decision 
to hold the referendum. Following a surge of popularity in the aftermath 
of a failed September 30, 2010 police uprising that threatened his 
political position, a win in the referendum would allow Correa to 
reaffirm his legitimacy and hold on power. Rather than entrenching 
Correa’s grasp on power, however, the referendum revealed a deeply 
fragmented country that was split along race, class, and regional lines.

The Questions

On January 15, 2011, the fourth anniversary of Correa’s initial 
inauguration to office, the president formally proposed a referendum 
designed to implement reforms to deepen his “citizen’s revolution.”In 
particular, he was determined to remove corrupt and inefficient judges 
from their positions, and to give the police more power to fight crime. 
Opponents feared that Correa was using rising crime rates as a cover to 
conduct a power grab, including an attempt to stack the courts with his 
allies.

The referendum began as a single issue of reforming the penal code to 
extend the period of pre-trial detention for criminals in order to 
address issues of public security. It then expanded out to a total of 
ten issues. The first five questions would amend the new 2008 
constitution, and the remaining five touched on issues of wide ranging 
social, political, and economic significance. Each question came with a 
lengthy appendix describing its import and how it would be implemented, 
though it is doubtful that many voters bothered to read or study these 
details.

The key questions in the referendum was one that would reform a judicial 
system that Correa saw as corrupt and inefficient, as well as allow for 
an expansion of the president’s executive power. Passage of the first 
two questions would cancel the constitutional limit on the length of 
preventive detention, with a goal of accelerating the pace of criminal 
cases in the judicial system.

The third question would limit the overlap between media companies and 
the banking sector, in particular restricting private banks from owning 
other companies and forbidding private media companies from 
participating in other economic ventures in order to prevent conflicts 
of interest. This question was important because the press remained 
firmly in the hands of the traditional oligarchy and is solidly opposed 
to the current government. In a sense, the press had replaced political 
parties as a vehicle for an expression of the large economic interests.

The fourth would completely overhaul what many see as a corrupt, 
inefficient, and ineffective judicial system. The fifth question would 
expand the council of the judiciary that appoints judges to include 
representatives from other branches of government. Opponents argued that 
these measures would make it possible for the president to limit the 
independence of the courts, essentially constituting a power grab. 
Correa, on the other hand, claimed that such steps were necessary to 
curtail corruption, overcome paralysis in the judicial system, and make 
the judiciary more efficient.

A second set of five questions touched on a broad set of 
non-constitutional issues. The sixth question would criminalize the 
illegal acquisition of wealth in the private realm, something that was 
already classified as a crime in the public sector.

The seventh question would ban casinos and gambling, and the eighth 
would outlaw the mistreatment or killing of animals for entertainment. 
This question would be decided on a local level, and of the ten 
questions faced the strongest challenge, particularly in areas such as 
Quito with strong bullfighting and cockfighting traditions.

The ninth question would create a regulatory council to monitor violent, 
explicitly sexual, or discriminatory content in both the broadcast and 
print media. Many opponents interpreted this measure as an attempt to 
limit the freedom of the media in order to muzzle dissent, and was one 
of the most controversial questions on the referendum.

The final question required employers to register their employees in the 
Social Security Institute. This was the least controversial of the ten 
proposals, and enjoyed the highest level of popular support.

The Opposition

As the May 7 vote approached, a variety of campaigns both for and 
against the referendum moved into high gear. While the government ran a 
strong campaign in favor of the referendum, the opposition was very 
fragmented. Although the oligarchy opposed any move that Correa made, 
some of the most serious opposition came from his former allies who had 
grown disillusioned with the growing authoritarianism of his government. 
Broadly the opposition to the referendum fell into four groupings, each 
to a certain extent representing a degree of knee-jerk reaction against 
anything that the president might oppose.

First was the traditional conservative and now largely discredited 
oligarchy that with Correa’s presidency had lost its long 200-year grasp 
on political power. Although out of government, they continued to have a 
stranglehold on the media and used this to attack and denounce Correa at 
any opportunity. Leading this opposition were such figureheads as 
Guayaquil mayor Jaime Nebot from the conservative Partido Social 
Cristiano (PSC, Social Christian Party), and billionaire banana magnate 
Álvaro Noboa, Ecuador’s richest man and perennial losing presidential 
candidate, of the Partido Renovador Institucional Acción Nacional 
(PRIAN, National Action Party of Institutional Renewal).

Second were political opponents grouped around Lucio Gutiérrrez of the 
Partido Sociedad Patriótica (PSP, Patriotic Society Party). A career 
military officer, Gutiérrrez had initially come into the public’s eyeon 
January 21, 2000 when he joined with Indigenous movements in a coup that 
removed Jamil Mahuad from power after he implemented drastic neoliberal 
economic policies of privatization and the dolarization of the economy. 
Although the coup failed, with the support of his Indigenous allies 
Gutiérrez won the presidency two years later. In power, however, the 
former colonel quickly moved right, embraced the same neoliberal polices 
he had previously denounced, and alienated his social movement base. 
Nevertheless, Gutiérrez became highly adept at manipulating 
clientalistic relations, and as a result maintained a strong base of 
support in central highland Indigenous communities with relatively low 
levels of political consciousness. Reflecting Ecuador’s deeply 
entrenched regionalism, Gutiérrez also drew on deep support in his 
native Amazonian region.

A third group were leftist dissidents who were former Correa allies but 
had become alienated from his autocratic style of governance. These 
leftist opponents charged that the concentration of power in Correa’s 
hands only served to roll back the expansion of direct democracy as 
embodied in Ecuador’s new progressive 2008 constitution. The most 
important leader of this wing was economist Alberto Acosta, a former 
close ally of Correa who initially served as his minister of mines and 
then as president of the 2008 constituent assembly.

Following Acosta, four congressional deputies and two cabinet ministers 
left Correa’s political coalition to join the opposition to the 
referendum. Most significantly, these included Alexandra Ocles, an 
Afro-Ecuadorian woman who was the minister of the secretariat of 
Pueblos, Movimientos Sociales y Participación Ciudadana (SPPC, Peoples, 
Social Movements, and Citizen Participation), a fourth branch (together 
with the executive, legislative, judicial, and electoral) of the 
government. These dissidents released a statement that said that while 
they embraced the positive changes in Ecuador, Correa “cannot exceed his 
functions: in the exercise of power, we must recognize limits.” For that 
reason, they would oppose the referendum.

These former allies viewed the referendum as a naked power grab on the 
president’s part that betrayed the principles of their political 
project, while Correa attacked them as opportunists who had joined the 
partidocracia (the traditional party system). The president denounced 
their actions as a personal betrayal of his government. Acosta countered 
that while he supported referendums and agreed with some of the issues, 
he opposed Correa’s attempts to blur divisions between branches of 
government. In particular, he urged defense of the independence of the 
judiciary.

Social movements formed a final axis of opposition to the referendum. 
Most notable was the Confederación de Nacionalidades Indígenas del 
Ecuador (CONAIE, Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador), 
and the Movimiento Popular Democrático (MPD, Popular Democratic 
Movement). Founded in 1986, CONAIE gained a reputation of being one of 
the strongest and best organized social movements when in 1990 it lead a 
powerful uprising that challenged the oligarchy’s hold on power. In 
1995, it helped organize the political coalition Movimiento Unidad 
Plurinacional Pachakutik (MUPP, Pachakutik Movement for Plurinational 
Unity) to compete for political office.

The MPD formed the electoral wing of the Maoist Partido Comunista 
Marxista Leninista Ecuatoriano (PCE, Ecuadorian Marxist Leninist 
Communist Party), and drew much of its support from teachers grouped 
into the Unión Nacional de Educadores (UNE, National Union of 
Educators). In power, Correa had worked hard to divide and destroy both 
Indigenous movements and teachers’ unions who were able to mobilize 
bases of support separate from those that formed the president’s 
electoral alliance. As a result, activists who otherwise logically might 
form Correa’s base of support became his sworn enemies. For social 
movements, government attempts to improve public security meant little 
more than the criminalization of dissent.

In alliance with the CONAIE and the MPD, Acosta launched a movement 
called Montecristi Vive to oppose the referendum. In the coastal city of 
Guayquil, former interior minister Gustavo Larrea created a parallel 
movement called Iniciativa Ciudadana. Both argued that the judicial 
reforms violated stipulations in the new constitution.

What Does the Outcome Mean?

A strong win in the referendum should have improved Correa’s position 
ahead of Ecuador’s presidential elections in 2013. Pundits, however, 
debated what the closely divided outcome meant both for Correa and the 
political landscape of the country.

Although many saw the referendum as a test of confidence in Correa’s 
government, voters apparently also voted on the basis of each individual 
question. As a result, seeing the outcome as a reflection of Correa's 
popularity is simplistic and perhaps mistaken.

The urban poor remain Correa’s base, though he has lost much of the 
support of Quito’s middle and upper classes that streamed out into the 
streets in April 2005 to overthrow his predecessor Lucio Gutiérrez in 
the so-called Forajido (“Outlaw”) Rebellion and subsequently supported 
Correa and the country’s new constitution.

Correa’s strongest base of support in this referendum was on the coast 
that in recent years has voted heavily for conservative candidates. Some 
social movement activists pointed to this as evidence of the rightward 
drift in Correa’s government, but it could equally represent a new 
fragmentation of Ecuadorian politics along class rather than regional 
lines. This development has already been apparent in recent elections in 
the coast port of Guayaquil, Ecuador’s largest city, in which Correa has 
polled very well among the urban poor.

Likewise, central highland Indigenous communities were one of the 
strongest bastions of opposition to the referendum. On the surface, it 
might appear that this represented a resurgence of CONAIE and 
Pachakutik, but these are also the areas where Gutiérrez has his 
strongest base of support and thus should be interpreted as a right 
rather than left opposition to Correa. The fragmented nature of the 
country extends into rural communities, and Indigenous peoples and 
nationalities do not speak with one voice.

After winning six elections and with his popularity rating hovering 
around 60 percent, sociologist Jorge León contends that the referendum 
had little to do with the president wishing to consolidate or expand his 
power. Rather, León argued, it related to his psychological need to be 
loved and adored by the people. Furthermore, with an election still two 
years away, a referendum would be a way for Correa to demonstrate that 
his opponents had little weight or presence.

Correa remains the most popular politician that Ecuador has had in 
decades, even though the vote might be seen to indicate a decline in his 
popularity. Nevertheless, the disparate opposition lacks leaders who can 
begin to approach the president’s level of popularity. Perhaps Correa’s 
weak showing in the plebiscite can be interpreted as a popular attempt 
to limit his actions rather than an attempt to remove him from office. 
Social movements in particular desire a president who is less 
authoritarian, less abrasive, less polarizing, and more responsive to 
their needs. But more than anything, the referendum revealed a deeply 
fractured country that appears to be becoming even more divided along 
race, class, and regional lines.


Marc Becker ( marc at yachana.org ) is author of Pachakutik: Indigenous 
Movements and Electoral Politics in Ecuador (Rowman & Littlefield 
Publishers, 2011).

-- 
Marc Becker
marc at yachana.org
http://www.yachana.org