Aljazeera.net
MONDAY, APRIL 16, 2007

Ecuadoreans overwhelmingly voted in favour of a referendum that should enable Rafael Correa, Ecuador's president, to wrest greater powers from congress.
 
With only part of the ballot counted, early official returns showed 83 per cent of voters on Monday backing Correa's call for the formation of an assembly to rewrite the country's constitution.

"This assembly with broad powers could reform the legislative, judicial and even the executive branch," said Correa.
 
"Let's move ahead with this assembly to have a real representative democracy."

Winning the referendum allows Correa to push ahead with initiatives such as ending the lease on a US military base, re-negotiating oil deals and restructuring the national debt.
 
In the past he has scared foreign investors with threats to stop making debt payments and promised to cut off contact with the International Monetary Fund.
 
But some economists predict that investors will welcome Correa's victory, as strengthening the presidency would mean Ecuador's leader will feel less pressure to maintain his approval ratings by implementing policies such as slashing debt payments and consequently push Ecuadorean bond prices higher.
 
Volatile politics
 
Critics of Correa say he is centralising power around himself and could become too powerful.
 
But Ecuador's politics are volatile, the country has seen eight presidents in a decade, three of them toppled by public action, and the landscape could change again by September when another election will be held to select 130 members for the assembly.
 
Lucio Gutierrez, Ecuador's former president who was toppled from power by massive street demonstrations in 2005, remains a political influence and has vowed to use the 130-member body against Correa.
 
"I will defeat him in the assembly," he said on Ecuadorean television after the exit poll result.
 
Voting is mandatory for Ecuadoreans and Sunday's turnout appeared as high as for last year's presidential election.
 
Correa had staked his political career on the vote, pledging to resign if he failed to win emphatically.

The Green Plan is making steady progress in its attempt to promote sustainable development, cultural integrity, and environmental conservation in the South Central Ecuadorian Amazon (specifically, in the Provinces of Pastaza and Morona-Santiago). Notably, in the last month, the Green Plan established critical agreements with the current Ecuadorian administration which will place its policy proposals at the center of important policy debates in the near future.

For example, today (April 13, 2007), the Minister of Environment, Ana Albán, is set to present her Environmental Plan to the Presidential Cabinet. The Green Plan is included among her top priorities, with a special focus on establishing a moratorium on oil extraction in the South Central Amazon. In the next few days, we should be hearing the results of whether or not this proposal was accepted by the Cabinet.

As part of Fundación Pachamama’s Cooperation Agreement with the Ministries of Environment and Economy and Finances, two important studies have been conducted in order to further substantiate the Green Plan’s policy proposals. The first study carried out an macro-economic and fiscal analysis of income generation from hydrocarbon activities. The second study looked at different mechanisms and sources for funding current and potential conservation initiatives in the South Central Amazon. These two studies are the first in a series of technical papers, funded by the Green Plan that will be shared with the government in order to argue for prohibiting further expansion of the “oil frontier” into the South Central Amazon. 

The Green Plan also held a meeting with the Ministry of Energy and Mines, the Ministry of Environment, and a number of other organizations from Ecuador’s civil society, to talk about the Ishpingo, Tambococha, and Tiputini (ITT) oil block. The ITT oil block constitutes one of the largest crude reserves in Ecuador. In that meeting, the Minister of Energy and Mines, Alberto Acosta, declared that Ecuador’s President, Rafael Correa, would stop oil extraction from the ITT block if he were presented with alternative financing strategies that would cover at least 50% of the income expected to be generated from that concession.
It is also worth mentioning that the National Secretariat for Planning and Development (SENPLADES, according to its Spanish initials) and the Ecuadorian Coordinating Body of Environmental Organizations (CEDENMA) have formally incorporated the Green Plan into their internal discussions. For Pachamama, having the Green Plan on the discussion table in these institutions demonstrates the interest that is being generated around this initiative at the national level.

Finally, Pachamama has made a push to attract public attention to the Green Plan. For example, in mid-March, we presented the proposal to the Alliance of Ancestral Peoples in Resistance (APAR), which represents Indigenous Peoples from the Ecuadorian Amazon. It was also presented at the Latin American Congress for Youth and Development, in Argentina. Both of these presentations were intended to generate wide support for this promising and vital initiative for alternative development in Ecuador.

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