Chavez and Soros’s ‘Alternative Democracy’ Wins against Functional Democracy

It is fairly obvious that Rafael Correa, the financial bag man for new age caudillos Hugo Chavez and Kirchner of Argentina, has been elected the new President of Ecuador. It is also patently clear that he was elected on a platform of pledged nation-destroying behaviors which were refashioned and retooled  from his original pledges, noted in the 1^st Election Round as unelectable and unpalatable to the voters, and the retooled 2^nd round ‘moderated’ promises which re vamped his campaign and took his campaign to the winner’s circle. Upon accepting his new seat of power, Rafael Correa stunned Ecuadorians and promptly denounced his own moderated promises and immediately returned to his hard core communist platform. The voters were duped and informed of same.

In other words, Correa toned down his earlier platform of neo-communism and tales of his visits with Hugo Chavez and Kirchner of Argentina. He did not ruminate over his recent love letter to Fidel Castro, pledging solidarity with communists and his vow to `take’ Quito triumphantly as Castro took Havana. Rafael Correa told his voters that he was much more moderate and had restrained his pro-communism impulses. Correa posed for photo ops with the U.S. Ambassador Linda Jewell, cozying up with her on love seats in the country’s most expensive hotel. Correa claimed that the U.S. Ambassador whispered in his ear that the U.S. stood with him in all matters. The Correa charm offensive, staged niftily with the U.S. as Correa’s puppet for propaganda, encouraged the subtle shift from gross fears of Correa’s hard line threats to a wholesome assumption that if the U.S. would embrace Correa, as it did, then Correa would be acceptable.

Aiding and abetting Rafael Correa’s charm offensive of lies was the hyperactive and incredibly vapid media of Ecuador. A combination of quick, short shallow sound bites and a daily diet of pro-Chavez, anti-U.S. editorial writers (with no opposition posited at all), Ecuador’s media has succumbed to the lower ranks of credibility. Peru, Columbia and Venezuela’s media carried more fact-based reporting on Ecuador’s presidential race than Ecuadorian media.

WHAT HAPPENED

Three factors converged over the last six months to enable Correa’s win:

a. The Ecuadorian voters were badly misled….duped is more the word in to a zombie-like state of false campaign pledges of moderation by Correa.

b. The pro-democracy actors actually assisted the pro-communist take over of Ecuador by doing nothing and surrendering early, while symbolically cozying up to the Chavez agents, and

c. Ecuador’s voters neither demanded nor obtained unbiased information about the key issues of the day.

While Noboa was hastily rejecting all offers of assistance as not needed, Correa was incredibly active behind the scenes to garner votes by telling anyone who would listen that he had “magically reformed” from his life long commitment to installing communism in Ecuador. Here is also what happened:

1.      The United States neither denied nor withdrew from the Correa position that Ambassador Jewell supported his positions, thus signaling to Ecuadorians that Correa would self-moderate in his new approach. By embracing Correa, the U.S. and its paid staffers never had to say a word to support Correa: their body language and their paid contractors’ activities performed the necessary support for Correa.

2.      The media delivered a reprehensibly low level coverage, delivering a virtual brown out, of the presidential campaign and the core platforms, almost as if under an agreed upon media brown out. This reduction of fact based reporting on campaign issues encouraged voter ignorance.

3.      Ecuadorian voters hold the lion’s share of responsibility for voting Rafael Correa as their new president. No one forced Ecuadorians to vote for this man, unlike Correa’s political ally, Hugo Chavez where job threats are understood for opposition voting. And unlike Venezuela and Brazil where electoral voting machine high jinks and electronic vote manipulations are well known and stubbornly ensconced to benefit the Chavez regime, Ecuador had no such electronic machine fraud, having removed the OAS-backed electronic vote transmittal system sold under an opaque, non-compete contract with a Brazilian turn key operator which was applied in the 1^st Round vote but collapsed.

The sole blame for electing Correa lies squarely on the Ecuadorian voters. Correa’s electoral campaign not only applied a 2^nd round charm offensive of lies and propaganda to convince voters that Correa would be moderated, also applied a new string of high jinks and KGB-style dirty tricks at levels never seen before. Rather than exposing and rejecting these dirty tricks, Ecuadorians ignored recent acts and brushed off Correa’s dirty tricks offensive, preferring to believe Correa’s `magic bullet’ theory that he had miraculously transformed his hard line approach to a moderated approach.

For his part, Alvaro Noboa remained true to form: always a bridesmaid and never a bride. His campaign was lack luster and relied on Noboa’s closed inner circle who arrogantly assumed that Noboa’s heft would gain the majority. Noboa’s team never sought nor enjoyed any interaction or enjoinder to boost his efforts or bring any energizing benefits to their one dimensional campaign approach. Ignoring the electronic media and the young voters felled Noboa’s campaign. In the end, Noboa appeared lazy and arrogant in his campaign’s presumption that his theatrics would garner the majority. Clearly, Noboa needed to embrace all electoral regions and he failed to do so. Noboa’s one-dimensional campaign failed to electrify or organically transmit.

Correa energized his base voters, the generic systemic 30% of all Ecuadorians, comprised of a welter of old school communists, anarchists, the growing new Hezbollah attendees, pro FARC supporters, trade unionists who depend on state union corruption, small bands of so called Indigenous who claim to speak for all of Ecuador’s Indigenous

(still under 10% of the total) but do not, and the ever growing cadre of loosely knit George Soros-NGO style activists called Alternatives to Democracy  who do truly believe that a Worker’s Paradise should be theirs with a central government controlling every facet of their lives except where drugs, sexual preferences, abortion on demand and educational rhetoric must be theirs.

These foot soldiers of propaganda – the cadre of NGOs- out distanced and outflanked Noboa, delivered the necessary voter turn out, even as their major funding from Venezuela and Cuban pass through funds has not once been exposed in a meaningful fashion. The majority of Correa’s financial backers are the same cash and stash global operatives who do now gain Ecuador’s oil and gas resources for fun and profit. To this Correa donor scheme was a small roster of Ecuadorian donors for a wide assortment of reasons which includes pledges of new growth businesses under the new caudillo Correa and assisted by pro Correa activists paid for by the U.S. under their now-standard, mostly 2^nd tier contractors.  Noboa initially energized his base of voters who clearly believe that trade, industry and democracy is the better route. But Noboa failed to understand the overwhelming propaganda spewed by the mobilized NGOs and the unwillingness of Ecuadorians to self inform on the issues of the day or to translate what this message contained for Ecuadorians even as Correa mounted a new agenda based on lies, dirty tricks and propaganda. Noboa’s one dimensional efforts were overtaken by Correa’s three pronged efforts.

Correa Won by Deceiving Voters, Noboa Lost by Laziness

In other words, Correa won lying to his voters about his true intentions and Noboa lost by failing to translate the key issues and expose the dizzying array of dirty tricks by the Correa camp.

If there is a problem in understanding what just happened in Ecuador, it is that most thoughtful persons cannot comprehend voters who do not demand election analysis, voters who do insist that their media deliver higher levels of coverage, resist dirty tricks campaigns and denounce bait and switch political schemes so patently obvious that the head swims.

Correa won the election by promising to re-build Ecuador and retain democracy’s promise. As we know now, Correa pronounced himself the winner long before the final votes were tallied and the Exit Polls so obviously handed him the day. Correa, instead of applying common sense and thanking his campaign workers and the voters….and repeating his three week old vote-winning promise to moderate, could not help himself. Rafael Correa immediately plunged into telling the Ecuadorians that he had just played them for a patsy, lied to them in his three week old plan of moderation, that all his charms and all his cozying up with Linda Jewell was a lie. Correa immediately launched in to his preferred diatribes about converting Ecuador in to an isolated worker’s paradise under the Bolivarian Plan, whatever that is.

Ecuador’s voters have been duped, tricked and lied to. Correa master mined a winning strategy based on bait-and-switch, coupled with horrendous dirty tricks and fueled by Hugo Chavez’s cash and operatives. It has paid off. What we do not know is just how wretched the voters of Ecuador feel today having suddenly observed Correa immediately put them on notice that they had been manipulated for his gain and not theirs. What Correa did upon announcing his win, which was not so stunning to many political observers, was a stunning and immediate reversal of all that he had pledged in the 2^nd round. Correa put Ecuador on notice that he had tricked them, lied to them and cared even less.

In a surreal fashion, Correa did not even wait for the final Exit Polls, let alone final vote tallies, to self proclaim victory, although statistically the win was his. His first Victory Speech forgot to simply thank his supporters and graciously decamp. Almost as if what has increasingly appeared as a daily anti-psychotic medical regime- not unlike what Chavez seems to require with Lithium for his bi-polar condition as noted often in the media, the early day meds seemed to be wearing off as Correa immediately launched in to pronouncing his hard line communist manifesto for Ecuador, forgetting all recent promises and rewarding his true backers which of course are not the badly informed voting public.

Correa is clearly out of the closet now, out of his self imposed regimen of self restraint as dictated by his handlers and his political moderation, which coincidentally carries all the hallmarks of a man heavily medicated by anti-psychotic drugs. But democracy fares badly when controlled by those in a closet, never quite revealing their true intentions and always carrying a hidden, primary agenda. In point of fact, all who worked assiduously to deliver Correa’s win on November 26 acted to conspire to keep Correa’s true agenda whitewashed/covered over/glossed over and in the closet. Diplomacy always fails when it must deal with those in or out of the closet. Democracy suffers when its leaders and their actors play games about their closeted agenda. What is abnormal soon appears normative in manipulative reality. This is a key element in the Correa scenario and will be crystal clear today as Policy Analysts pour over Correa’s Victory Speech last evening, his triumphant coming out of the Closet Speech, as it were.

But now that Jack is out of the Box and Correa's backers – his real backers- clearly gratified, there is no celebrating at all except by those who dishonored democracy by deceptions and trickery. To rejoice for Rafael Correa and commend his positions is to applaud the end of democracy, however it was gained and however badly Alvaro Noboa campaigned.

The hundreds of well paid so called NGOs, beavering away for the structural removal of democracy in Ecuador, have much to self congratulate themselves about in Correa’s. Correa immediately revealed his re-commitment to their constitutional trickery…..Chavez-style socialism by constitutional caveat and massive control of the nation by one central authority- their presidential politburo. Even a quick scan of their new proposed constitutional deception to reinsert socialism by constitutional take over exhibits eerie parallels, almost as if by cut and paste, to Chavez and Evo Morales’s centrist, opaque socializing government take over plans for self enriching, aka constitutional referenda.

Ecuador’s presidential election was never about politics anyway. This election was a de facto referendum on removing of retaining those pesky reminders of democracy’s structures and open, free markets. Without so much as a by your leave, no one paid attention as this conversion plan was couched under the thin veil of fair play of political rhetoric. They missed the point. Correa is a mixture of old school Marxist-Leninist thought with the new crop of anti Free Marketers who truly believe that Milton Friedman was a liar. And Ecuador just cheerfully passed in to the realm of this neauveau caudillo: closed, unfree, unfair, and determinedly self enriching at the expense of their own citizens.

by Pedro Camargo