PHM-Exch> Ecuador: The Events of 30 September 2010

[Claudio Schuftan]

On Thu, Oct 7, 2010 at 4:49 AM, MSP-LA <msp-latinoamerica at etapanet.net>wrote:

>  *Ecuador: The Events of 30 September 2010*
>
> By Ramiro Vinueza* *
>
> To understand the events of 30 September we must put them in historical
> context, which will give us a more complete picture.
>
> For the past several months, many of Ecuador’s working people’s
> sectors—unions, indigenous, peasants, teachers, students, public servants,
> small business owners, pensioners—have been escalating and expanding their
> protests again the neoliberal policies of President Rafael Correa’s
> administration, which, when implemented, are harming the interests of the
> country, its peoples, and their organisations, and returning to
> privatisations and sell-outs.
>
> *What do the workers and peoples want?*
>
> The workers are defending their union rights, which the government has
> wanted to rescind.  Indigenous peoples across the country have been fighting
> in defence of water as a vital human resource.  Peasant and indigenous
> communities oppose the Mining Law as a sell-out and legalised plunder.
> Teachers are demanding better guarantees for public education and opposing
> retaliatory, exclusionary evaluations.  Students and all the country’s
> universities are against the Higher Education Law, which eliminates
> university autonomy, student co-government, open admissions, and other
> benefits and rights.  Public servants have mobilised to defend job security
> and advances made through long struggles.  Pensioners are seeking better
> pensions and better treatment by the social security system.  Small business
> owners have been out in the streets campaigning for a law that would
> guarantee their right to work, social security, and other benefits.
>
> There has also been activism and protests against government positions
> favouring imperialist oil, mining, and telecommunications monopolies;
> foreign borrowing under unfavourable terms; involving the country in Plan
> Colombia; and promoting a policy harmful to national sovereignty by signing
> the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS).
>
> President Correa has responded to these social organisation protests and
> criticisms with repression that has caused deaths and injuries and enormous
> material damages, such as the attacks on the people of Dayuma and on the
> miners of Azuay, the murder of Shuar teacher Bosco Wisuma, the violent
> eviction of miners in Zamora, and other events.  Leaders of worker,
> indigenous, peasant, student, and teacher organisations have been arrested,
> tried, and persecuted.  They are subjected to the offensive attacks and
> smears of a loud, incessant campaign in the large government-controlled
> media outlets, accusing them of being ‘mediocre,’ ‘terrorists,’ ‘corrupt,’
> etc.
>
> *Mutinous police demanding their rights  *
>
> Against this backdrop, on 30 September, police officers rebelled in
> different parts of the country, took over their barracks, and went into the
> streets in response to the Legislative Assembly’s adoption of the Public
> Service Law and to the presidential veto, which takes away benefits,
> improvements, and subsidies that this sector had won over several years.
>
> The mutinous police officers protested these changes and even demanded that
> the head of the police force be removed, but at no time did they say they
> wanted a change in government or its overthrow.  Instead, they requested
> dialogue, an end to authoritarianism, and a response to their problems.
> Thus, this protest by police officers is like that of other working class
> sectors that are defending their aims, rights, and triumphs.
>
> Before the government declared a state of emergency, the police officers
> had been about to make their demands public through the mass media.  Their
> basic demands were the overturn of the Public Service Law and reinstitution
> of honours and bonuses.  They explained that police cannot be treated the
> same as other public servants because they work longer hours under distinct
> conditions.  They also protested that the Police Day bonus and Christmas
> basket were taken away and that it was not just that a recently graduated
> officer earns $1,400 while a sergeant with 25 years of service earns $1,200.
>
> It is wrong to make the accusation that these actions are part of an
> anti-democracy, anti-administration ‘conspiracy’ and that they are part of
> an attempted ‘coup d’état’ by ‘right-wing fascists’ with ‘left-wing
> participation,’ without any proof at all.
>
> In reality, representative democracy was never in danger.  No social force
> or political party, with the exception of former president Lucio Gutiérrez,
> mentioned or called for Correa to leave.  Everyone spoke of the need to
> resolve the conflict via negotiation and dialogue, which even Ecuador’s vice
> president stated from Guayaquil.
>
> The insistent denouncement by the regime of a supposed ‘coup d’état against
> Ecuadorian democracy’ brought immediate shows of support from the U.S.
> government and the United Nations, while at the same time also producing
> declarations from the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR), the region’s
> governments—Venezuela, Bolivia, Argentina, Paraguay—and also from Colombia,
> Chile, and Peru.
>
> It must be noted that the majority of the social organisations, fighting
> for their own causes, have made it clear where they stand and have
> criticised the real or supposed conspiratorial actions of the right, the
> partocracy, the oligarchy, and the imperialists.  This was spelled out in
> declarations from the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador
> (CONAIE), the Quichua people’s federation ECUARUNARI, trade unions, and the
> Popular Front and all its member organisations, such that the accusations of
> conspiracy speak for themselves.
>
> The chief of the Joint Command of the Armed Forces, General Ernesto
> González, backed constitutional rule.  He insisted on the request for the
> revision or annulment of the Public Service Law, the cause of the conflict,
> when appearing on the indefinite, obligatory nationwide, government-ordered
> simultaneous broadcast by the country’s media outlets.  All the spokespeople
> for the rebelling police officers made the same plea, and all media outlets
> were able to pick up these statements demanding their needs be met.  The
> famous ‘anti-democracy conspiracy’ that the administration and its servants
> were denouncing was nowhere to be found.
>
> *Events at the Quito police barracks*
>
> The situation was serious and generalised, but things got out of hand when
> Correa, making an arrogant show of things and displaying open recklessness,
> went to confront the rebels in the Quito barracks where he was met with
> their rejection and hot-tempered excesses.  He ended up sheltered in the
> police hospital, from whence he was removed that night in the midst of a
> surprising and outsized military operation, broadcast on radio and
> television to the entire country, which gravely endangered the president’s
> life, and left a toll of several fatalities, dozens of wounded, and heavy
> damage to the medical facility.
>
> Following his spectacular exit, Correa arrived at the Plaza Grande square
> to cheering and applause from his supporters, where he again put on his
> authoritarian, arrogant, and menacing airs: making unsubstantiated
> accusations, distorting the truth, calling for ‘public revenge,’ saying
> ‘there will be no forgiving and forgetting’ of the conspirators, etc.
>
> It is important to leave clear before going on that the democracy is a
> triumph won by the workers and peoples over hundreds of years and that is
> why they defend it, despite its limitations and omissions.  Representative
> democracy is an expression of the power of the ruling classes and safeguards
> their interests.  For the great majority, for the working classes, it
> continues to be the rhetoric in whose name they are excluded and trod upon.
> Since they are clear about these concepts, the social struggle, the actions
> of workers and peoples, and the police officers’ rebellion were not
> proposing or fostering a violation of the country’s institutional system,
> and it was even less so that the rebellion was the result of conspiratorial,
> coup-mongering zeal from the right, the partocracy, or the imperialists.
> The course of workers and peoples, of the revolutionary left, is clearly
> defined.  It is the independent march toward their permanent liberation
> played out daily in their struggle for social and democratic rights, aims,
> and triumphs.
>
> However, it is true that the government line that there was a ‘coup’ was
> successful and this confused a segment of public opinion in the country and
> abroad.  However, at the grassroots level, things are clear.  The events of
> 30 September are a new episode in the social struggle.
>
> Beyond the government’s vengeful, retaliatory stance and whatever sanctions
> it may impose, this posture leaves deep wounds among the police officers and
> in several social sectors.  The government of the ‘citizens’ revolution’
> that is now chanting victory should know that the struggles of the workers,
> youth, and peoples continue—because the crisis continues, injustice
> continues, social inequality is increasing, and corruption is burgeoning and
> going unpunished. The tumult, the social struggle, and the ambition for true
> change are becoming the standard being hoisted by ever broader and greater
> sectors of our peoples.  The people’s conscience is growing.
>
> Even so and despite these events, workers’ leaders and organisations
> continue demanding the overturn of the presidential vetoes and of the
> anti-people, anti-national elements of related laws, such as the amendments
> to the laws on hydrocarbons, land use planning, public service, higher
> education, public funding, and others that harm workers, youth, and
> peoples.  The public is also demanding that the state of emergency be lifted
> immediately, since the government is saying that there are no civil
> disturbances.
>
> *A coup, or not?*
>
> Correa’s imprudent, challenging posture at the Quito barracks, rather than
> the conciliatory attitude that he could have used, became a reprimand to the
> gendarmes and a challenge to them to ‘kill me,’ which set off outrage and
> cries of ‘Correa the liar!’ and ‘Correa the traitor!’  Then, amidst tear gas
> and aggression, he was evacuated to the police hospital, where he was
> treated for problems with his leg.
>
> Around 1 pm, Foreign Minister Ricardo Patiño harangued the people gathered
> in Plaza Grande to go ‘rescue the President.’  Journalists Xavier Lasso and
> Giovanna Tassi did the same from Radio Pública, following declarations by
> President Correa along the lines that people could be about to enter his
> hospital room to attack or kill him.  Around noon, a state of emergency was
> declared and one of the measures was to order the mass media to link in to
> be able to simulcast.  This is when the idea that an attempted coup was
> underway gained strength.  Every government official who was interviewed had
> the role of reinforcing this idea, which was massively disseminated around
> the country and abroad.
>
> According to news reports, the military forces that were supposed to take
> control over the situation waited until an agreement was reached with
> Defence Minister Javier Ponce to do so.  Apparently, those negotiations were
> fruitful and the military assumed control of the country.
>
> A little later, it became known that there would be a military operation to
> liberate the president, while around the hospital government supporters were
> fighting with police, who dispersed the crowd with tear gas.
>
> *A gruesome, manipulative show*
>
> The operation authorised by Correa was put into action with the objective
> of ‘rescuing the captive president.’  Announcements were made.  Invitations
> were sent to mobile phones to go to the Plaza Grande to receive the
> president, before he was rescued.  In the square, a large screen was set up
> so that the people present could view the action live.  Everything was ready
> for the show.  It was a confusing operation, the least of which was rescue,
> and it irresponsibly put the president’s life at risk.
>
> Listening to Correa’s speech at Plaza Grande, it appears that the head of
> government is not willing to turn back.  He said nothing of revising laws or
> sanctions for those who were involved in the disturbances.  Plus, even
> though the president says they are only a handful of bad elements and
> ‘infiltrators,’ it was obvious that the majority of the police officers
> supported the measure.
>
> This means that there will be no rectifications, that neoliberal-style laws
> will persist, that arrogance will continue to be the government’s modus
> operandi, and that threats will become commonplace as will the
> criminalisation of social protest, which will be stamped out in blood and
> fire.
>
> Therefore, social organisations must continue working even harder *for the
> unity of all sectors, to defend *their just aims, social triumphs, and
> rights; for those of us who are fighting for a better future.  This is
> where, without a doubt, the strength of the people resides, which holds the
> assurance of victory!
>
>
>
>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://phm.phmovement.org/pipermail/phm-exchange-phmovement.org/attachments/20101007/92cfa666/attachment.html>