21-11-18 11:21:00,
Ecuador’s Soft Coup and Political
Persecution
By Rafael Correa
The destruction of the rule of
law
November 20, 2018
“Information
Clearing House“
– Can you
imagine a “democracy” in which the president
handpicks a council that proceeds to dismiss
the Constitutional Court, the Judicial
Council which oversees the judiciary, the
National Electoral Council, the Attorney
General, the ombudsman, and all six major
regulators (superintendents)?
Unfortunately, that is the current
situation in Ecuador. Abusing participatory
democracy, and deceiving the public with the
complicity of a corrupt press, on February 4
of this year they called an unconstitutional
referendum.
Several articles in our constitution
stipulate that the Constitutional Court must
rule on the legality of any referendum
questions, but, given the clear
unconstitutionality of several questions,
the government knew that a ruling would not
go its way and called the referendum by
decree. For the first time in its history,
Ecuador had a nationwide referendum without
a ruling from the Constitutional Court.
With the approval of the tricky and
confusing question 3, they seized the
so-called Council of Citizen Participation [CPCCS
in the Spanish acronym], whose members were
selected through national competitions, and
which, according to the Constitution of
Ecuador, is responsible for overseeing
competitions that elect about 150 control
authorities. [1]The unconstitutional
referendum gave a “Transitory” CPCCS (which
I’ll refer to as the CPCCS-T) the “power” to
evaluate and, if applicable, dismiss these
control authorities. The dismissal of
authorities is an exclusive constitutional
power of the National Assembly. The
Constitutional Court, which is not even
selected by the CPCCS , cannot be dismissed
by anyone else.
At present, Ecuador does not have a
Constitutional Court. The President’s
handpicked CPCCS-T [after dismissing the
court] declared a two month absence of the
court which expire this week and will surely
be extended. Throughout this lapse,