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Chavez ally faces banana baron in Ecuador election



November 26, 2006

QUITO, Ecuador (AP) -- A leftist friend of Venezuela's anti-U.S. President Hugo Chavez and a Bible-toting banana baron who rubs shoulders with America's rich and powerful battled Sunday to became Ecuador's next president.

Voters were choosing between Rafael Correa, 43, a tall, charismatic U.S.-trained economist who has pledged radical reforms to clean up corruption, and Alvaro Noboa, 56, Ecuador's wealthiest man, whose campaign speeches were peppered with references to God.

The winner of the tight race will face the tough task of ruling this poor, politically unstable Andean nation, which has had eight presidents since 1996, including three who were driven from office by street protests.

Noboa, a billionaire, has run an old-fashioned populist campaign, crisscrossing Ecuador from its Pacific coast to the Andes and eastward to the Amazon jungle, handing out computers, medicine and money.

Correa said early Sunday that he remained concerned that his opponent might try to commit fraud, including having ballots switched as they are moved from voting stations to election tribunal offices for counting.

"No one should try to buy votes in the lines. Buying or selling your vote can land you in jail," he told reporters over breakfast at his home in an upper-middle-class neighborhood in Quito.

He said he was willing to accept a clean defeat, but "if it is fraudulent, we will never accept it."

'Lesser of two evils'
"I'm voting for Correa because he's the lesser of two evils and because he represents a new option," said Georgina Cornejo, a 59-year-old housewife waiting to vote in a middle-class suburb on Quito's south side. "We're hoping he doesn't let us down."

In the coastal city of Guayaquil, Noboa's stronghold, Arnulfo Napoleon, a 50-year-old security guard voting at a school in a poor neighborhood, said he was supporting Noboa.

"He's lost two elections. It's time he win so that he can help the neediest as he has been up to now giving away so many things," he said.

A win by Correa, who has called President Bush "dimwitted" and rattled investors by threatening to reduce payments on Ecuador's $16.1 billion foreign debt, could shift the nation into the leftist camp of Chavez, who is seeking to extend his influence throughout South America.

Ecuador is an oil-exporting country, but three-quarters of its 13.4 million inhabitants live in poverty, and Noboa has directed his campaign to them.

Both candidates promise new low-cost homes
Noboa, who is making his third run for the presidency, has pledged to build 300,000 low-cost homes a year, financing them through government bonds, and to create jobs by persuading his rich foreign friends to invest in Ecuador. He counts the Kennedys and Rockefellers among his friends.

He proudly points out he is Ecuador's biggest investor, the owner of 114 companies. He says he will use his business skills to bring Ecuador's poor into the middle class.

Correa, who has a doctorate in economics from the University of Illinois, is new to politics. He served just 106 days last year as finance minister under interim President Alfredo Palacio, who replaced Lucio Gutierrez in the midst of street protests in April 2005.

Correa has pledged to construct 100,000 low-cost homes and copied Noboa's promise to double to $36 a "poverty bonus" that 1.2 million poor Ecuadoreans receive each month.

On top of his threat to reduce Ecuador's foreign debt payments, he vows to reform the political system to reduce the power of traditional parties in Congress. But that has worried some voters in a country that has suffered a decade of political instability.

"People have doubts. Neither of the two candidates inspires confidence," said Washington Cercado, a hotel employee in Guayaquil, Ecuador's business center and largest city.

"One is a millionaire and because of that people say he has no reason to steal. But they also say he pays low wages in his companies and has thrown out people without paying them what he owes them. The other is a fresh face with a clean mind, they say. But in Ecuador there are no politicians with clean minds."

Chavez has been making a fool out of himself. His fanatical behaviour has been counterproductive. Two examples are Peru and Mexico. In both cases the left lost due to fear of Chavez-like governments.

Chavez vows he'll outdo himself in new term




December 2, 2006



SABANETA, Venezuela (AP) -- Hugo Chavez has called George Bush the devil, allied himself with Iran and inserted himself into election races all over Latin America. He has poured Venezuela's oil wealth into uplifting the poor, and rivals Fidel Castro as a defiant voice of the left.

Now, as he seeks another presidential term in an election Sunday, he is telling Venezuelans this is only the beginning of his effort to remake Venezuela as a socialist oil power.

Chavez predicts a "hurricane" victory that will secure a mandate for zero compromise on policies that inspire both adulation and despair. Having survived a coup, a recall referendum, a general strike and clashes with the Roman Catholic Church, business community and opposition media, he has entrenched his power and sharpened left-right divides beyond Venezuela's borders.

His main challenger, tough-talking state governor Manuel Rosales, trailed far behind in an AP-Ipsos poll last month, but nonetheless has galvanized a fractured opposition movement of millions desperately hoping he can unseat Chavez.

"This is our last chance. This is the last time we can stop him from ruining this country," says Margarita Nunez, a 23-year-old university student in Caracas who firmly believes that Chavez seeks to preside over a one-man communist system like his Cuban mentor, Fidel Castro.

"If he wins, I have to find a way to leave, go somewhere," she said.

Humble beginnings

Conflict and contradiction have marked Chavez's rise from a boy who sold homemade desserts on the streets of Sabaneta, a dusty backwater in the western Venezuelan plains.

Now 52, twice divorced with five children, he is Latin America's most forceful leader. His speeches brim with homespun stories of his humble origins, resonating with the many Venezuelans who approve of what he's done for the poor.

"Chavez is a good person. He remembers what it was like when the streets were full of mud and there were no schools," said Felicia Olivera, 70, who waited hours under a hot sun to hear Chavez speak in Sabaneta. "That's why he helps us."

Many fear his vaguely worded plans for the future, and his promise that his rule until now has been only the beginning of his so-called Bolivarian Revolution, named for Simon Bolivar, who liberated much of Latin America from Spain.

"A new era will be born next Sunday," Chavez told a sea of supporters clad in Chavista red at another rally. "There is no room in Venezuela for any other plan besides the Bolivarian Revolution."

Chavez first came to prominence as a paratroop commander leading a failed coup attempt in 1992, and was elected six years later on a wave of discontent with Venezuela's corrupt political elite.

He promises a new "21st-century socialism" which aims to redistribute the country's oil wealth to the poor, mainly through programs that provide everything from subsidized food to cash benefits for single mothers.

Chavez has consolidated as much power as a democracy can credibly permit: His allies have near-total control of state offices, congress and the judiciary; he has increased state control over the oil industry; he got the constitution changed to allow him a second term and wants to change it again to abolish term limits altogether, allowing him to stay in office beyond 2012.

Striking a chord in the region

As Castro's health deteriorates, Chavez has become Washington's biggest adversary in the region, with ample petrodollars to back him up.

He has collided with the Bush administration on multiple fronts. He opposes its free-trade efforts, has stayed supportive of Iran in the midst of international efforts to abort its nuclear program, and famously described Bush to the U.N. General Assembly as "the devil."

Chavez insists the White House was behind the coup led by business and military leaders that unseated him for two days in 2002, only for him to be swept back into office with an outpouring of support from Venezuela's poor.

His Bush-baiting has hit a chord in a region which often feels treated as Washington's backyard, but the strategy has also at times backfired.

Some diplomats blamed Chavez's U.N. performance for scuttling Venezuela's bid for a seat on the Security Council, while perceived links with Chavez may have cost leftist candidates election victories in Mexico and Peru.

On the other hand, Bolivia, Nicaragua and Ecuador are now in the hands of elected Chavez allies with radical stances worrisome to the U.S.

Chavez has pledged at least US$1.1 billion (euro830 million) in loans and financial aid to the region in the past two years, and billions more in bond bailouts for friendly governments as well as generously financed oil deals.

Chavez opposition rebuilds itself

But the largesse has proved a weakness at home. Polls show many believe it's too lavish.

"How it pains us to see Venezuela's riches being wasted, squandered, and on top of that, given away," says candidate Rosales, who has jumped on an issue that resonates here along with crime and unemployment.

Rosales, a cattle rancher and provincial governor, has rebuilt the opposition from its crushing defeat in the 2004 recall referendum. His supporters cite polls showing the race is tight.

The opposition accuses Chavez of waging an unfair propaganda campaign, appearing constantly on state TV and using state programs to make political capital. Some accuse the government of coercing public employees to vote for Chavez.

Observers from the European Union, the Carter Center and the Organization of American States will monitor the polls.

Chavez's strongest support is among the poor and working class in a country where 34 percent live on less than US$3 (euro2.3) a day. Rosales finds his most solid support among wealthier Venezuelans. The middle class appears split, according to the AP-Ipsos poll.

In the AP-Ipsos poll carried out November 10-18, 59 percent of likely voters said they would vote for Chavez for a third term, while 27 percent said they would support Rosales. Thirteen percent said they were undecided or wouldn't answer. The survey had an error margin of 3 percentage points.

Corruption is among voters' top concerns, and Rosales has sought to capitalize on the discontent, staging the largest anti-Chavez rally in years last Saturday. Though there were no official crowd estimates, journalists said it appeared to draw a larger crowd than a Chavez speech the next day.

With Rosales warning that fraud will not be tolerated at the polls, and Chavez accusing the opposition of plotting to undermine the legitimacy of the election, shoppers have packed grocery stores to stock up on supplies in case the vote is followed by violence.

If Chavez wins, his greatest hurdles may lie ahead, with even ardent supporters pressuring him to deliver on the enormous expectations he has raised among the poor.

When he returned to his hometown last week, a sea of outstretched arms greeted him -- but many held signs claiming promised housing hadn't been built, social programs were "in crisis," and policies "aren't working."

Antonio Mugnolo, a hardware store owner who has known Chavez since boyhood, says the president has made a difference by improving schools and roads.

"But he should have done a lot more," he says, complaining of corruption and inefficiency in the local government headed by Chavez's father, the governor of Barinas.