January 22, 2007  It is our hope that sound reporting, such as O'Grady's article below, puts an end to the confused, misleading misinformation and inappropriate analysis we have suffered from over the past 9 months regarding Rafael Correa's intentions to abandon any sound governability and fiscal responsibility for Ecuador and plunge Ecuador in to disastrous chaos in alignment with Hugo Chavez's satellite system whose sole intention is to extract Ecuador's light and sweet crude resources to replenish his own.

The Wall Street Journal piece by Mary Anastasia O'Grady is factually unassailable and affirms the realities of the new Chavez regime in Ecuador so often misspoken by mainstream media in their rush to gloss over Correa's criminality as underway. O'Grady's article stands alone for its correct analysis and needs no further explanation. To this we add that the warning is clear: Rafael Correa will turn Ecuadoreans in to serf like status with no real guarantees of liberty for the Chavez bloc. Correa has said all along that his goal is a communist satellite nation inside his planned submission to Hugo Chavez's oil for political alignment scam.

Under Rafael Correa's unconstitutional and illicit plan, Ecuador will have no integrity, no secure economic future except as handed out by the state politburo wallet randomly, will have its free speech and media shuttered, will have its economic future ruined, education will be converted to the Cuban state communist curricula, health care will be provided by badly educated Cuban triage nurses with the name of "doctors," and no one will know where or what happened to their oil revenues except that....they have gone....to Chavez. In short, Ecuador is on its way in less than 90 days toward becoming a totalitarian petro state satellite under Hugo Chavez.

Less than one month ago, the U.S. Embassy in Ecuador, its ambassador herself an enthusiast for terminating functional ruleof law in Ecuador while supporting the new authoritarian power grab underway by Correa, heralded Correa's politcal rise with Ecuadorean business and civic leaders in attendance to observe the U.S. Ambassador and Senators Dubin, Salazar, and Harry Reid-among others- embrace Rafael Correa as their new best friend. Fending off all common sense and denying all that the USA stands for, this politically motivated love fest for Correa only provided comfort to Hugo Chavez's newest bag man, Correa, emboldening his unconstitutional authoritarian sweep and embracing the endgame for removing any legitimate foreign commercial investment in Ecuador. One U.S. Senator quipped that their efforts in Quito were to `assist' U.S. foreign policy in the Andes. When the self-proclaimed fans of the Chavez-Morales-Correa-Ahmadinejad play group returned to Washington, they set about to further mislead by proclaiming publicly that this is of course all the fault of President Bush, further repeating the same paid propaganda spewing from Chavez's well-greased disinformation machine which moves smoothly across the Democratic Party in Washington, D.C. Friends such as these have no known basis for their adolescent play group approach to diplomacy which have en group ignored the core facts regarding the sworn intentions of Correa and Hugo Chavez.

O'Grady has given freedom-loving Ecuadoreans a tremendous gift by shifting the current adolsecent "diplomacy" and media propaganda regarding Correa toward a fact based analysis. It is to Ecuadoreans to repeal the politically motivated propaganda underway and correctly demand the facts regarding their own place in time.

It is a cynical and lazy fool's errand to assume that Chavez and Ahmedinejad have truly won the hearts and minds of Ecuadoreans and therefore we must abandon our core principles and surrender democracy's endowment to their planned totalitarian state kleptocracy (currently enshrined in their final "new" constitutional texts).

While appropriate prevention-based diplomacy is too late for Ecuadoreans, gaily abandoned for political gains, it is not too late for wiser souls to stop the formal state communist-style satellite conversion plan underway. Ecuador's Congress, almost all freshmen members, deserves a chance to apply the tools it is sworn to uphold as a constitutional democracy. Their first obligation is to review the new Correa-Chavez sweeping sovereignity ending so called contracts...all of them. Their second obligation is to demand a formal explanation from Correa- on the record and with fact based texts- of his planned end to democracy's tenants such as his constitutional reform underway to end separation of power, control all commercial and media interests, terminate transparency and abruptly end statesmanlike behaviors and formal treaties, obligations and international relations. Correa seeks full control of the Ecuadorean police and military and intends to strip Congress os its sole obligation to legislate, delivering totalitarian powers to himself under his new constitution. Correa knows that he cannot persude public support for his dictatorial power grab if Ecuadoreans actually grasp what he intends to do so the public has been victimized by crude propaganda that they must support his new constitutional power grab, sight unseen.

Ecuador's Congress must learn from their Venezuelan and Bolivian friends that to approve- sight unseen- the Correa constitutional plan and gain a seat at his bargaining table is a crude, deceptive ploy. The Correa dictatorial covernsion plan is already laid out and there is no hope for any reinsertion of democracy's tenants in this manifesto.  The false invitation to have a seat at their totalitarian table is to surrender all hope of dialogue and reform. We have seen the effects of efforts to team  up with Correan and Chavez as Lucio Gutierrez's party naively agreed to Correa's pressures ( whether by strong arm political pressure or cash payemnts as rumored, we cannot be sure). Gutierrez's party agreed to work with Correa's constitutional power grab and immediately suffered public humiliations galore by Correa and Chavez who called Lucio names and deemed him, well...less than a donkey. This is how Rafael Correa behaves: he threatens, he demeans and he manipulates and holds no capacity for honesty, diplomacy or negotiating. There is no negotiating with the newest dictator in Latin America. Ecuador's Congress has the duty thsi week to demand full accounting for the Chavez actors inside Ecuador's government and the new constititutional assembly, whatever that cabal is. All citizens hold the same duty to defend their right to access the Correa conversion plan for all Ecuadoreans. It is show time now.

It is the fundamental obligation of any freedom loving  persons and nations to stand united with upholding constitutional behaviors and cancelling the current love fest for dictators such as Correa and Chavez. It is now the duty of all of us to encourage all Ecuadoreans to support the constitutional obligations of the Congress to call forward Correa today to detail his dictatorial plans and end this game of hide and seek remilitarization of Ecuador.

Expect no assistance and no help from Correa's cabinet who have no clue as to their high office and no intention of performing appropriate acts of state inasmuch as they are incompetent, deceptive, and utterly lacking in preparation and education to perform their constitutionally granted duties. this cabinet of thugs, communist party leaders and pornographers are nothing but pass through persons on the road to totalitarianism in the Andes under Correa's cult-like vision.

Ecuadoreans can and must detail the illicit roster of Chavez-placed minders, advisors, political agents, business deal makers and cash hand outs over the last year and the intended influx of even more KGB-style intelligence officers and propagandists in Ecuador. Ecuadoreans have allies internationally and must call upon their friends to support them in this time of crisis or find themselves walled off under the well managed year-long informational brown out underway. Today, many Ecuadoreans prefer to cast blame on the USA for abandoning them, wrongly claiming victimhood. While there may be a kernel of truth to the reprehensible acts to encourage this "alternative democracy" engineered by the well paid  US. government financed political actors. in Quito, this is only about 25% of the problem, the rest being Ecuadoreans themselves who were lied to by Correa and must now hold him accountable for his lies and his new 90 day blitzkreig to install Chavez's dream state in Ecuador.

The coup de grace is underway today in the Andes. This is actually an auto da fe... self emollation of democracy. Once the "new" democracies are enshrined handing Correa, Morales and Correa full and total constitutional powers to be in every sense dictators, there are no tools in democracy's arsenal that can legitimately alter their full powers, except condemnation and isolation whose progeny is  poverty, misery,  increasing quality of life termination, high unemployment and isolation. There will be no democracy for Ecuador and no sustainable quality of life. This will come as a shock to many Ecuadoreans who assume that their preferred union-backed jobs for life will be guaranteed under their previous mercantillist semi-sociallist state will continue. There are no guarantees for any in Ecuador except this: their once vibrant choices and increased quality of life will end soon under the Chavez and Correa oil and economic depletion plan. No Ecuadorean should assume that their middle class preferred life style of shallow and badly educated shopping mall excursions will continue with price controls, a banking system unable to cope, a total open wallet on state oil revenues to benefit only the Chavez-Correa politburo and not the citizens who are being reduced to serfs. There will be no shopping mall lives for Ecuadoreans under the Chavez-Correa plan. No amount of highly-valuted nation-wide vapidity will preserve their inert vacuousness and no amount of their own Miami-based dollar flight and asset depleting banking will rebuild or sustain their nation.We do not know if this is enough to wake up the middle class who have taken a pass on their citizen obligations in Ecuador. But we do know that the facts are on the table and many nations and friends stand ready to help defend against Ecuador's new dictatorship. It begins with the facts.

Freedom lovers in Ecuador know all too well that their warnings have fallen on the deaf ears of the Correa-Chavez political cult and have not resonated inside the boozey middle class, currently hiding out in Ecuador's massive shopping malls and incessant festivals.They know very well that all support for rebuilding and strengthening the foundations of Ecuador's capacity to exist as a democratic republic have suffered from slander, libel, commercial and contract fraud and the debilitating effects sustained by on-going  criminal behaviors by those who will one day be held accountable for their nation-ending acts.

Today the only thing standing between Hugo Chavez's take over of Ecuador are its constitutionally empowered congress and its citizens. THey deserve support from all sectors for strength against the new red tide that will destroy democracy and legitimate trade, plunging Ecuador into a failed state status. If Ahmedinejad's triumphant entry to Ecuador on January 15, 2007 as part of the Venezuelan-Iranian-Ecuadorean troika was not enough to wake up most feckless Ecuadoreans who have no clue as to who he is and frankly could care less in their frenetic get-out-the-shopping lives, then it is the obligation of all Ecuadoreans to assist in education and action against this Axis of Evil that has infected the region and their homes.

-Pedro Camargo

The Wall Street Journal                                                                                        

January 22, 2007                                                                           

       THE AMERICAS

            Making Lenin Proud

By MARY ANASTASIA O'GRADY
January 22, 2007; Page A14

"The way to crush the bourgeoisie is to grind them between the millstones of taxation and inflation."

-- Vladimir Lenin

Mexican historian and author Enrique Krauze has written that he believes that the "last Marxist in history [will] die at a Latin American university." At a minimum, Mr. Krauze seems to have gotten the geography right.

Most of the rest of the world has stuffed communism into the dustbin of history but, as events over the past week remind, Latin America has not. Earlier this month, President Hugo Chávez officially took control of Venezuela's central bank and declared himself a communist. He then traveled to Ecuador to attend the swearing-in ceremony of his latest and perhaps most promising protégé, Rafael Correa, as that country's new president. Mr. Correa has lost no time emulating his mentor.

Mr. Correa, who was Ecuador's finance minister in 2005, was well known in the early stages of the presidential campaign last year as an anti-American, anti-market extremist with a view that "dollarization was the biggest economic error [Ecuador] has ever committed." But when he failed to win in the first round of voting in October, he was forced to adopt a more measured tone and backed off his pledge to end dollarization.

The trouble for Ecuadoreans, as we are now seeing, is that their new president's stripes have not changed. In his first week on the job, he has already demonstrated a profound understanding of Lenin's dictum that power over monetary matters is a revolutionary essential. To that end, he has begun an effort to destroy Ecuador's dollarization. From there, taxation and inflation will do much of his work for him.

At his inauguration last Monday Mr. Correa put on quite a show. Most extraordinary was his not-so-subtle admission that Mr. Chávez is going to be the power behind the Ecuadorean throne. Most Latin governments guard their independence as a matter of national pride. But Mr. Correa appeared quite happy to let the world know that he will be outsourcing Ecuadorean sovereignty to Venezuela.

Ecuador, the new president declared, is "leaving the night of neoliberalism behind" and the new "Bolivarian" government will pursue "21st-century socialism." He denounced competition and called for cooperation instead. He held up a sword that Mr. Chávez had given him as a gift and cried, "Look out, look out, Bolívar's sword is passing through Latin America," a reference to the Chávez agenda, which calls for South American integration under the thumb of the continent's largest energy producer. The Venezuelan president was perched behind the new president, eyes narrowed, enthusiastically applauding the performance. Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was also an honored guest, sitting next to Bolivian President Evo Morales.

Ecuador's political instability is legendary and Mr. Correa is the eighth president in 10 years. He will have to move quickly in his goal to consolidate power and if he is to avoid the fate of his predecessors, he will also have to move carefully.

Rewriting the constitution is so central to his agenda that on inauguration day he decreed a March 18 national referendum on the issue. The only problem is that Mr. Correa hasn't the power to call a constitutional referendum. Changes to the constitution fall under congress. Since Mr. Correa's party has no members in the 100-seat chamber and his coalition is shaky, it is not entirely clear that he will be able to push through the constitutional changes he seeks. His socialist revolution via a constitutional coup could be delayed.

Still, that doesn't leave the aspiring authoritarian without options. He has Lenin's millstones to fall back on, if only he can resurrect a local currency. This explains the assault on dollarization now under way.

The adoption of the greenback as Ecuador's currency seven years ago has been extremely popular among Ecuadoreans of all classes. A long history of repeated bouts of hyperinflation, which destroyed both wages and savings, has finally come to an end and been replaced by a new sense of stability. Mr. Correa knows full well that he cannot strip Ecuadoreans of this one economic gain without facing the kind of rebellion that brought down previous governments. Yet the control he yearns for will not be his as long as the dollar reigns.

To reverse dollarization and introduce a fiat currency, Mr. Correa will have to undermine the dollar economy. One step in that process is stifling commerce with the U.S., his country's largest trading partner. He has already pledged that under his guidance Ecuador will move away from trade liberalization with the gringos and throw its lot in with Mr. Chávez's Bolivarian Alternative for America trading block.

Protectionism will help weaken the dollar economy but it may not be enough to provoke a crisis. A forced restructuring of the country's $10.3 billion in external debt will provide further assistance by damaging the country's creditworthiness and discouraging new investment, particularly because it is well known that Ecuador's debt service as a percentage of gross domestic product is lower than Colombia's or Brazil's. Creditors understand that paying what is owed is a matter of willingness. Nevertheless, Mr. Correa's finance minister, Ricardo Patino, last week proposed a haircut of 60% on the country's debt and invited a team of Argentine officials -- otherwise known as the world's most experienced deadbeats -- to Quito this week to act as advisers.

It will be claimed that the "savings" on debt service will be used to help the poor. This will boost Mr. Correa's populist appeal but politicians never have enough revenue to meet their goals. Low growth rates and disappointing oil prices will exacerbate revenue shortfalls. In a fiscal crisis it is easy to imagine a government like Mr. Correa's issuing script or a new currency in parallel to the dollar.

The new president seems to be prepared for just such an outcome. In the past he has called for a regional currency and he has now announced that he will end central-bank autonomy. Once foreign investment and trade dry up and the bottomless pit of corruption and social spending drains public coffers, dollarization will be the scapegoat. Mr. Correa can then begin to print his own notes and make Lenin proud.

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