June 28, 2007  Parroting America's wiley Ben Franklin, upon emerging from the first and last constitutional congress the USA ever needs over two hundred years ago, when asked what had transpired, noted that the assembly had created a Republic- if  the people could keep it. The United States has just handed Ecuador a U.S. tax payer gift of free trade with no justification, no facts, relying on a crassly crude and massively overpaid propaganda campaign to lie a lot to the U.S. government, and successfully garnering no comprehension whatsoever of the Correa government machinations. But an eight month gift it will be, however unjustified, if Ecuador's main perpetrator of some of the region's worst malfeasance and maligned lies, Rafael Correa can keep it.
 
The extension of the free trade pre school primer for beginners, called ATPDEA, was supposed to see its progeny mature and grow up, as Mexico, Panama, Canada, Peru, Colombia, the CAFTA nations and Chile have done with fully operational FTAs, which truly see their in country economies blooming. But Ecuador preferred to remain in preschool by choice, preferring to remain willfully immature and blithely uneducated about its own realities. Stubborn addictions to adolescent behaviors have cost Ecuadoreans not only their self respect but global respect as well. The American team is very happy to continue as co-addicts in this Romper Room of leftists and pornographers called Correa's Cabinet, refusing to provide even a modicum of analysis and reporting on the nation's self imposed afflictions. While the rigid control freak Rafael Correa threatens and stamps his little feet in anger- assuming that foolish tirades gain his Majesty affection by demand, the rest of the world turns away in disgust wondering why no one acts like an adult in Ecuador, even as their own citizens seem to be addicted to manipulative behaviors. 
 
Highly respected financial analyst Walter Molano sheds some light on the perils of Correa's ruinous misrepresentations in the current LATIN BUSINESS CHRONICLE here. Molano correctly points out that Correa is imbued with destructive, self enriching activities hiding behind political motivations which are far far away from normative law and order. This in turn has created more manipulation and deterioration. We suggest that all involved review and enshrine the June 26, 2007 Public Statement from the Government of Ecuador to the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee of the U.S. Congress, Max Baucus. Correa's government is credited with pledging to abandon its rejection of rule of law in Ecuador. That erstwhile, albeit inchoate pledge, was the basis for the deal by the U.S. Congress to justify its pre rigged deal to reward the indefensible Rafael Correa. Coupled with a pledge to monitor Ecuador closely, a simple and required act which has not been accomplished once since Peter Romero took the reigns under Bill Clinton, it is possible that Ecuador may yet see some much needed fact based monitoring. Certainly the pledge to do so is acute. More to the point must be that Ecuadoreans monitor Correa in all his majesty.
 
Yes- Rafael Correa criminally bribed, among many others, the president of their Congress.
Yes  -Rafael Correa, in order to help Hugo Chavez, criminally committed crass bond market manipulations.
Yes- Molano is right to touch on these facts. And there is no one- no one at all with legitimate business sense, willing to risk all in that lawless zone called Ecuador unless and until Correa clears out his corruption. No one forced Rafael Correa in to a bizarre ménage a trois with Iran and Hugo Chavez.
Grace may yet lead him home but in the meantime, Correa needs to end his reprehensible threesome.
 
Rafael Correa has no clue what or where his national budget has become. Correa does know that his oil income is way down because of incompetence and theft. Correa does know that he just sold a large chunk of his nation's oil patch to a shady character who is deeply involved with Russian outfits named Marc Rich who can also only be assumed to be involved with Iranian and Venezuelan murkiness, although a true fact based analysis remains lacking along with terms of all the Chavez-Correa-Iranian deals. Correa calls this majestic behavior. We call it adolescent stupidity. We also call it....criminal. See today's piece in HOY here.
 
While pretending that Rafael Correa deserves yet another massive bail out from the USA called an ATPDEA extension because, as they explain, to do not so drives Correa further into his illicit ménage a trois with Hugo Chavez and Iran's mullahs- ostensibly to help "the poor," the U.S. government has foolishly failed to override this joke. The facts are this: Hugo Chavez's bed- and his free cash- comes up empty. Chavez is criminally overleveraged and cannot fund Correa's wonderland for criminals as his first commitment is the original Disneyworld  for communists called Castro's Cuba. Chavez is today deflated and overextended, currently amassing a mighty- and we do mean mighty- arsenal to defend his right to criminality. The U.S. democrats' claim that Chavez would embrace his already embraced Correa missed a key point: Chavez's embrace today has no charms- aka no money available and Correa is in no way able to fund his pledge that Ecuador would have magical funding to replace one half its GDP which would be lost due to an end to free trade with North America. And Iran's magical funding stream is nowhere apparent either as Iran cannot even fund its crude social engineering project called planned over population of its own.. Iranian mullahs will not be buying Valentine's Day roses for their sweethearts, no matter how many wives they hold.
 
There will be no magical transformation under Correa's so called constituent assembly unless the entire format is altered. The assembly is pre rigged anyway.

Ecuador has lost its Ben Franklins to a sorry state of domestic malingerings. Ben Franklin sadly, by choice, will not emerge to remind Ecuador that it has a Republic which it can keep with its own hard work. But the true words of Franklin resonate. Today in EL COMERCIO, see here, are the beginnings of Ecuador pressing onward to remind that soon enough the USA may wake up and stop enabling Correa's criminality and soon enough Ecuadoreans may wake up and stop enabling their own national ethos of manipulation to self enrich the Correa team. The clock is ticking. The alarm bells are ringing. For whom will the bell toll?  Will Ecuador, to try to remain addicted to its self engineered manipulations, continue to indefensibly claim that it is helpless and is unable to reform/self-correct? Or will Ecuador finally enjoy what its adolescents in their Romper Room have needed for a long time- an adult intercession? We hope that Ecuador will not pull its life line out and terminate life as we know it. The bell tolls for Ecuador to stop manipulating itself.

Lives lived under manipulative, criminal regimes cannot long sustain. Eight months of oxygen is a mighty gift of life. Ecuador should not pull out its oxygen line and must regain freedom.
 
 
-Pedro Camargo for ECrisis