We are All Ecuadorians

We Are All Ecuadorians

By Ricardo Alarcón de Quesada

A CubaNews translation.
Edited by Walter Lippmann.

“Everything can be bought except the heart,” proclaimed candidate Lenin Moreno in Guayaquil at the close of his campaign that will culminate on April 2 with the ballot to decide who will be the next President of Ecuador. Already the former Vice-President had defeated all the others in the February elections in which he achieved a crushing vote and was a few votes short of obtaining the required majority -40% – to avoid a second round.

Then some spokesmen of the oligarchy threatened to “burn Quito” if Moreno, who got over a million votes more than the banker Guillermo Lasso, was proclaimed victor. Lasso, a character of this ungrateful memory, an ex-Minister directly linked to the disaster that in 1999, among other things, eliminated the sucre as Ecuador’s own currency, forcing the adoption of the dollar as a local monetary unit, and which led to the mass flight of about two and a half million Ecuadorians suddenly thrown into poverty.

Next Sunday, Ecuadorians will have to decide whether to return to that painful stage or continue to advance along the path of the Citizen Revolution initiated by President Rafael Correa ten years ago. It’s record, in terms of a more just redistribution of national income, raising from misery to two million people and shows remarkable progress in education and public health, an admirable work in roads, transport and communications and above all, the rescue of national sovereignty and a clean government dedicated to the benefit of the majority . No one has done so much in such a short time for justice in one of the most unequal countries of the Earth and had to do it in very difficult conditions as a result of the fall of oil prices, a huge earthquake and other natural calamities.

A ferocious and multi-million dollar media campaign is committed to confusing the people, promoting collective amnesia and dragging it to vote against itself. It is now time for the Ecuadorians to decide.

But what is at stake goes beyond the small and beautiful country. Next Sunday, Ecuador will literally be at the center of the world. There will also be decided the future of an emancipated Latin America in front of an Empire that seeks to restore its battered hegemony.

Initially posted to Ajiacomix, March 29, 2017:
https://ajiacomix.wordpress.com/2017/03/29/todos-somos-ecuatorianos/