Assange and Correa: Welcome to the Club of the Persecuted

For hints on whether Ecuadorian president Rafael Correa would give Julian Assange asylum, I took a look at the May 22 interview between the men for Assange’s self-titled show on Russia Today. Russia Today is a strange beast that will analyse anything in depth except Putin. Its series of Julian Assange Show episodes of interviews with many world leaders who don't get easy access to the western newsrooms, is passable telly.


“Correa is a left wing populist who has changed the face of Ecuador,” Assange announced in his introduction. “But unlike his predecessors he has a PhD in economics.”

Correa is a significant president and Assange quotes US embassy cables released by his own Wikileaks project that say Correa is the most popular president in Ecuadorian history. He was also taken hostage in a 2010 coup d’etat. Assange said Correa blamed the coup on corrupt media and launched a counter-offensive on the grounds the media define what reforms are possible.

Assange asked Correa Ecuador’s relationship with the US. Correa quoted Bolivian president Evo Morales who said the US is the only country in the Americas safe from a coup because it doesn’t have a US embassy. Assange admitted to Correa he liked his jokes. Correa suddenly got serious and said the only way he could eliminate funding US provided to Ecuadorian police was by increasing their salary.  "I'm not anti-American, I got two degrees there but Iwould never allow Ecuadorian sovereignty to bcompromised by the US".  Correa said he wanted Wikileaks to release all the cables as they had nothing to hide.

Assange asked about kicking out the US ambassador after the release of the cables. Correa said Heather Hodges was right wing with 1960s cold war attitudes. Hodges accused Correa of deliberately appointing a corrupt police commissioner. She didn't like the government and her main contacts were leaders of the opposition. The cables confirmed what they already knew. As Hodges was shown the exit door, Correa grew relationships with China, Russia and Brazil in her stead. 

Assange brought the subject back to freedom of information as he reminded Correa why he was 500 days of house arrest. Were Correa’s reforms were a step in the wrong direction for release of information?
Correa replied he was all for release of information. He mentioned an Argentinean book about Wikileaks which said Ecuadorian media did not publish.  He has long supported Wikileaks. “We believe, my dear Julian, that only things that should be protected against freedom of speech are those set in the international treaties,” Correa said. Correa said media power is greater than political power in Ecuador. “They usually have self-serving political, economic, social and above all informative power,” he said. He claimed the government were persecuted by journalists using insults and slander – mass media serving private interests.

With most TV stations owned by bankers and no public station in Ecuador, he faced merciless opposition to any banking reforms. “These people disguised as journalists are doing politics for fear of losing the power they always had,”  Assange said he agreed with his market description of the media which had censored Wikileaks material for political reasons. However he said the correct way to deal with monopolies or cartels to break them up. He asked could Correa have made it easier for new entrants. Correa said that was what they were trying to do was making one third of TV stations for the community and non-profit, one third commercial and the final third state owned by governments and councils. He said his 2008 law has been systematically blocked by big media and their lobbyists. 

Correa said Ecuador and Latin America are moving from the Washington Consensus.  “The policies dictated by the US had nothing to do with our needs in Latin America,” Correa told Assange.  Correa said governments had to put people before economic politics. He told Assange it was a pleasure to meet him in this way,
“Cheer up, welcome to the club of the persecuted,” Correa said.
“Thank you,” Assange replied. “Take care and don’t get assassinated.”
“That’s something we have to avoid every day," Correa replied.

A Correa change for Ecuador

The leftist democratic revolution continues in South America. The 43-year old Rafael Correa was pronounced winner of Sunday’s Ecuadorian run-off election. Correa held 57 % of the vote after 96 % of ballot boxes had been tallied. His rival, the banana magnate Alvaro Noboa has refused to accept defeat and has threatened to challenge the election result. However Correa’s victory was confirmed by one of Ecuador’s seven Supreme Electoral Tribunal judges Narciza Subia who said “Rafael Correa is the new president of Ecuador. The trend is not going to change.”

Correa celebrated in his home town by saying "the people have given us a clear mandate, with the second-largest margin in the last 30 years of democracy”. He will now push for reforms which include re-negotiating debt agreements, opposing a US free-trade pact and re-writing the constitution. Correa says the constitutional rewrite is needed to bypass a corrupt congress and curb political party influence in the courts. As it stands, opposition parties can appoint sympathetic judges to the electoral and supreme courts to stymie Correa. Political tumult is the norm in Ecuador and there have been 11 presidents in the last decade, three of whom were overthrown by politically-motivated lawmakers.

Correa, a trained economist describes himself as "left-wing - not from the Marxist left, but rather a Christian left". He was born in Ecuador’s largest city Guayaquil in 1963. He studied economics in Guayaquil Catholic University and gained his Masters' degrees in Belgium. By 2001, he gained a second masters and a doctorate in economics from the University of Illinois in the US. He is married with three children and is fluent in four languages: Spanish, English, French and Quechua. Quecha is the local indigenous language which Correa learned while doing volunteer work in his student days.

In 2005, Ecuador was plunged into a constitutional crisis after President Lucio Gutiérrez was driven from power by a 60-2 vote in Congress. He was replaced by Alfredo Palacio who appointed Correa as his finance and economy minister. However Correa only last four months in the job. During this time he tried to push through a program of poverty reduction and economic sovereignty. But he made powerful enemies when he defied IMF advice and publicly questioned the wisdom of a free trade agreement with the US. He thumbed his nose at the World Bank when he wound up a government debt reduction fund against their wishes as part of a program of measures to redistribute Ecuador's oil wealth more equitably. The Bank promptly cancelled a scheduled loan of US$100 million tied to maintenance of the fund. Correa turned to his friend Hugo Chavez for help. Palacio forced Correa to resign under intense pressure from the US. The official reason was due to his alleged failure to consult about the sale of US$300 million of sovereign debt to Venezuela. Correa claimed in his resignation letter that Palacio was aware of the sale. After quitting the ministry, he became economics professor at the San Francisco University of Quito. Meanwhile he founded his own party Alianza PAIS and prepared for this year’s presidential election.

In the first round of voting in October, Correa picked up 23% of the vote which left him second behind Noboa who picked up 27%. But Correa comfortably won the run-off due to his considerable personal appeal and enthusiastic campaign. He appeared at rallies brandishing a leather belt (correa is the Spanish word for belt) to show how he would deal with corruption. His campaign slogan was "dale correa" (give them a belting). Alianza PAIS did not run any other candidates in the election and Correa now plans to seek a referendum to rewrite the constitution and restructure Congress. He attacked Ecuador's Congress as a "sewer" of corruption and will rely on the support of the Ecuadorian Socialist Party to push his reforms through the parliament.

Oil is Ecuador’s major export and fifty percent of Ecuador's national budget is funded by petroleum earnings. Indigenous tribes of Ecuador are fighting for land rights, which have been jeopardised for over two decades years by Texaco and Ecuador's state-run company Petroecuador drilling in the Amazon rainforest Eastern part of the country. Correa said he would renegotiate contracts with foreign oil companies to raise the state’s share of crude oil volume. With the addition funds, Correa will prioritise social and infrastructure spending over paying off the country's $10 billion foreign debt.