New Ecuador Leader Vows Corruption Fight

www.timesdaily.com By MONTE HAYES Associated Press Writer January 15. 2003 2:33AM

Former coup leader Lucio Gutierrez pledged to battle corruption and entrenched poverty after he takes office Wednesday as Ecuador's new president, and warned that he would call street protests if the nation didn't change.

In a fiery address Tuesday night before the Supreme Electoral Tribunal, Gutierrez said he would found a new Ecuador based on "ethical values, moral values ... with social justice" for the poor, including Ecuador's large Indian population.

Despite his strong words, in his first clashes with what he has labeled as a "corrupt" political establishment, Gutierrez has taken a beating and come off looking inept.

He has been forced to back down from a series of demands and threats. He even had to apologize publicly for having said all the country's ex-presidents should be in jail for their responsibility in "the national disaster."

Gutierrez, 45, has also been accused of showing an authoritarian streak, raising fears in many Ecuadoreans that he may be a copycat version of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. Chavez is a former paratrooper and coup leader whose leftist rhetoric has divided Venezuela along class lines and produced growing political instability.

"I think they are different personalities but their political plans are not so different," said Benjamin Ortiz, head of a Quito think tank. "His goal is to accumulate political power and if he achieves it, it will be a beginning similar to that of Chavez, who began with popular referendums."

Gutierrez, frequently referred to in the streets simply as "the Colonel," thrust himself into the national spotlight three years ago when he led a group of disgruntled junior army officers and 5,000 Indian protesters in an uprising that drove the highly unpopular Jamil Mahuad from power in the midst of the country's worst economic crisis in decades.

He won an election runoff in November, on a campaign pledge to put an end to deeply rooted corruption.

One international study ranks Ecuador as the second-most corrupt country in Latin America and the eighth most corrupt in the world. In his campaign Gutierrez pledged to reduce the number of lawmakers, eliminate the influence of political parties over the court system and extradite corrupt bankers who made off with people's money when the banking system collapsed in 1999. He plans to call popular referendums to achieve his reforms. "At some moment the country must change or if it doesn't I will convoke marches," he said in an interview published Sunday in the daily HOY. "We will not permit the mafia to destroy what we want to build."

Gutierrez got a taste of what he faces in his efforts to rein in Ecuador's traditional power brokers when he failed to negotiate an agreement with opposition parties that would have given him control of the 100-member Congress. Gutierrez's political coalition has only 17 seats.

He angrily declared he would not take the oath of office in Congress but in front of "the people" in another forum. But when told the constitution required the oath be taken in Congress and that his vice president would be sworn in as president instead, Gutierrez backed down.

He then threatened not to accept the presidential banner from the Congress president, whose election he questioned as unconstitutional, before again backing down.

"He has no political experience and isn't familiar with constitutional norms, the mechanisms of negotiation," said Simon Pachano, a political scientist. "He is showing the authoritarian spirit of a military man. He is chief of the executive branch. He can't give orders to Congress.

"I think he's going to have a conflictive government and is going to want to resolve things in the street like Chavez."

Despite tripping up in his first confrontation with Congress, Gutierrez appears to have strong backing among the poor, just as Chavez has enjoyed in Venezuela.

Gonzalo Lopez, 51, a truck driver in Quito, is a Gutierrez supporter. "Congress is full of the corrupt," he said. "The traditional parties don't want the reforms that Lucio wants so that he can govern for the people."