Why Correa is Better for Business than NoboaOn the right: Álvaro Noboa, 56, is by all accounts the richest man in Ecuador. At home in Guayaquil and Washington, Cape Cod and Miami, his wealth was inherited from his father, the founder of the family banana kingdom. Mr. Noboa himself is no wimp. He fought and won a hugely public and bitter inheritance battle with his mother and siblings. Known in the country for his tough business policies, he has been condemned by Human Rights Watch for his exploitation of child labour on his plantations and his bullying tactics toward labourers and labour organisers.
More critically, he is seen as the representative of the old policies, the old oligarchy, and the old corruption. He is a neo-liberal, pro-capitalism, pro-Washington, pro-Catholic, and pro-free-trade with the USA. He has run an heavy-spending populist campaign, handing out food, wheelchairs, and computers and promising to build hundreds of thousands of low-cost housing units for the poor. “I am sent by God to help the poor,” he cried to a huge crowd, before falling to his knees with a Bible in his hand.
Many of the poor in the barrios and the hill farms may have swallowed this whole. The fearful small businesspeople who supported Mr. Noboa, on the other hand, hoped only for economic stability and a continuation of the system they already know.
* * *
And on the left, Rafael Correa. Expected to be the leader after the first round of voting in October, Mr. Correa’s mediocre showing worried his supporters and fired up his opponents on the right and centre. Over the last six weeks of the campaign, however, Mr. Correa returned to the attack. His advantages included his modern and youthful good looks, his excellent academic credentials (M.A. from Louvain, Belgium; PhD in Economics from University of Illinois), and his straightforward appeal to all levels of voters including indigenous voters (indígenas represent some 30 percent of the population, a caste of near-untouchables only now beginning to feel its political muscle; Mr. Correa alone of the candidates speaks Quechua). Mr. Correa’s constituency will certainly include the country’s large indigenous peoples, now finding a legitimate political voice for the first time.
Although on occasion arrogant and abrasive, he is a Catholic humanist with roots in both liberation theology and modern economics. He describes his approach as “practical socialism for the twenty-first century.” He wants to remove the stranglehold of the small and wealthy oligarchy that has always dominated the country, and clean up the corruption. Like most Latin Americans, he is sick of the American role in the western hemisphere, where ignorance and arrogance have been too often the wellsprings of Latin American policy in Washington, and the iron fist has been the means.
* * *
The six-week run-off campaign was marked by mudslinging from the right. They called Mr. Correa a wild man, a spawn of Cuban president Fidel Castro, a pawn of Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez, and a political na瑩
But the electorate apparently believed the bad-mouthers were going overboard. The voters had also begun in recent weeks to recognise that Mr. Noboa’s vest was anything but clean; the Human Rights Watch critique came back to haunt him, for example, and his banana empire of shell companies looked distinctly shady. Moreover, he appeared to be revealing his true authoritarian nature as the campaign progressed, threatening that if he won he would jail Mr. Correa. Touting the advantages of his personal contacts to a regime in Washington that is itself barely legitimate, decreasingly democratic, nakedly aggressive, militaristic, imperialistic, and now also unpopular even at home did nothing to help his cause. A vote for Mr. Noboa was going to be a vote for the same-old, same-old.
Voting is compulsory in Ecuador. But as the election drew near, nearly one person in five was still undecided. Apparently, in the end, they voted their hopes and aspirations and carried Mr. Correa into office with an overwhelmingly clear mandate. Outside observers provided by the Organization of American States (OAS) confirmed that the elections went smoothly and that there has been no evidence of fraud. (Oh, that every democratic country could claim the same!)
For the first time, Ecuador will have a president who has no members of his party in Congress. This is likely to make life very difficult for Mr. Correa even despite his huge electoral win. He will have to appeal over the heads of Congressional leaders to the voters who put him in power. Given the corrupt nature of the Congress, the electorate is likely to welcome this — feeling, perhaps, that they have some ongoing say in matters for a change.