Defiant pledge as Ecuador's new leader is sworn in

www.guardian.co.uk Duncan Campbell Thursday January 16, 2003 The Guardian

The former colonel who came to power in Ecuador with a pledge to smash corruption has warned that he will encourage his supporters to take to the streets if his reforms are thwarted.

Lucio Gutierrez, a leftwinger who was elected president last November in a runoff with the country's richest businessman, took office yesterday warning that he would punish corrupt politicians and officials.

In an address to the Supreme Electoral Tribunal in Quito earlier this week, Mr Gutierrez proposed a new approach to government, saying he wanted a country based on "ethical values, moral values... with social justice." He also said that he would govern the country of 13 million energetically and "with love".

Latin American leaders and foreign ministers have gathered in Quito for the inauguration, and also to discuss how to solve the growing crisis in Venezuela.

A group called Friends of Venezuela - first proposed earlier this month at the inauguration of the Brazilian president Lula da Silva - is being formed, with the backing of the US, to try to end the deadlock there.

Mr Gutierrez has been likened to the Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez: both men took part in coup attempts for which they were jailed, and both later ran for electoral office and were returned with large majorities on pledges to fight poverty and corruption.

Since the Venezuela crisis, however, Mr Gutierrez, 45, has distanced himself from Mr Chavez, and his pronouncements are more muted.

"At some moment the country must change, or if it doesn't I will convoke marches," he said in an interview this week in the Ecuadorean newspaper Hoy.

"We will not permit the mafia to destroy what we want to build," Mr Gutierrez said. During his campaign, he promised that he would redress inequalities in what is one of the continent's most corrupt countries.

With no previous political experience and a new political party, Mr Gutierrez has already been accused of naivety. With only 17 of the 100 seats in Congress under his control, he has had to back down from a claim that he would take his oath of office in front of "the people" rather than Congress. He has also apologised for saying that all the country's former presidents should be in jail.