ECUADOR IS LATEST IN PINK TIDE

Ecuador has become the latest Latin American nation to join five of its neighbors in a massive left-wing shift that is sure to send shivers through Washington.
In what is being called the “Pink Tide” Ecuadorians elected a new president, Rafael Correa, an American educated economist who is opposed to free trade with the US. He has pledged to reduce the level of foreign debt payments his country is forced to make to international bankers, including the World Bank whose representative he says he will expel from the country. His electoral success mirrors the growing leftward trend across Latin American and puts Ecuador alongside Venezuela, as well as Chile, Brazil, Bolivia and Nicaragua that have all elected socialist presidents in the past 12 months.
Rafael Correa, 43, has an economics doctorate from the University of Illinois and is a relative newcomer to politics but he shrewdly exploited anti-American sentiment throughout his election campaign. He described President Bush as “dimwitted” and applauded the recent attacks on him by Venezuelan leader, Hugo Chavez. He also lambasted his opponent, Alvaro Noboa, 56, for being pro-US and a friend of vested interests in Washington.
Noboa, a banana billionaire proved an easy target for Correa in a country where Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez is a hero and George Bush is a baddie. Noboa was making his third run at the presidency and presented himself as a bible-loving friend of the Kennedys and Rockerfellers. He also trumpeted his wealth and his ownership if 114 companies. During his campaign, he handed out free computers and even gave away $500 bills. Correa accused him of trying to scare the electorate by telling voters that if they did not elect him international companies and financial institutions would turn their backs on Ecuador.
As electioneering wound down, Correa subtly moderated some of his rhetoric when he realized it could scare off investors. In particular he stayed away from earlier threats he had made to dissolve the country’s assembly and reduce foreign debt payments. Both candidates promised a lot, each vowing he would build hundreds of thousands of homes for the poor and increase the $36 monthly “poverty bonus” to the 1.2 million Ecuadorians living beneath the poverty line. Noboa went so far as to demonstrate his generosity and upright character by reading from the bible at some of his rallies and handing out medicines. He told voters that, like Christ, all he wanted to do was serve the needy. Correa too had something to say about religion, describing himself as a “leftist humanist Christian.”

Both candidates knew they were dealing with an electorate that had seen eight presidents chased from office in ten years, the last two after serious street demonstrations. Therefore, Correa was able to cleverly portray himself as a new face - a man not tainted by the corruption that has characterized the country for three almost three decades. He was also fortunate that he was well known for his work with the poor through educational programs he hosted.
A major factor that characterized US concerns about the country lurching to the Left was the intervention of US investment bankers, Goldman Sachs, in the run up to the election. They made it clear they were siding with the billionaire Noboa when they publicly warned Ecuadorians not to vote for his opponent. GS in a statement said “We anticipate that the gridlock and confrontation between the executive and the legislature will reach new heights under a Correa administration.”
Some observers have since argued that the intervention of Goldman Sachs only helped Correa because it strengthened his case that Washington was prepared to use any means to influence the election result, even if it meant scaring the electorate about Correa’s proposed economic policies.
For Washington, the election result is now seen as yet another blow to US influence in the region and exemplifies a growing disenchantment with the Bush administration in particular. Correa was able to exploit President Bush’s global unpopularity throughout the election, making his opponent’s support for the US “a vote for George Bush.”
In a strange twist of irony, the moment the election result was announced, Linda Jewell, the US ambassador in Quito, the country’s capital, phoned Correa to congratulate him and to remind him of the historic ties between their two nations. Her overture to him came days after he announced he would not sign the lease on the US military base at Mantra when it came up for renewal in just over 2 years. In Washington, the State Department issued a statement, saying the election appeared transparent and fair.
It is now a striking reality that from 9/11 onwards George Bush focused on Afghanistan and then in a more concentrated way on the Middle East, especially Iraq. As a result, say some experts, he took his eye off the ball in Latin America and failed to see the genesis of a developing “Pink Tide.” More alarmingly, he appeared oblivious to the fact that China was stealthily increasing its influence across the Latin America continent, investing billions in the process, particular in countries like Brazil and Argentina. China also signed an oil deal with Venezuela that produces a fifth of the world crude oil.
Washington likes to portray the political change in Latin America as the malevolent influences of Hugo Chavez and his mentor, Fidel Castro, but that may be a convenient, if not a skewed analysis. Some study groups believe the populations of many Latin American countries simply want change and the winds of change are so strong, they are almost unstoppable. For example, the Center for Economic Policy and Research speculates that the election result in Ecuador was proof of ordinary people “going over the heads of the political establishment” as a way of dragging themselves out of poverty created by decades of corruption. If that analysis is accurate, US influence will further decline because it was US political meddling and US corporate greed that, in many instances, degraded many economies across that continent. For the next decade or so, the US may have the bite the bullet while this “Pink Tide” rises and either crashes or flattens out, allowing for new relations to be formed between America and its neighbors. On the other hand, the days of neo-liberalism in Latin America may soon be just a faded memory.