[NYTr] Ecuador Moves Toward a Citizen Revolutuion

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

Juventud Rebelde - Nov 3, 2007
http://www.juventudrebelde.co.cu/international/2007-11-03/ecuador-moves-towards-a-citizen-revolution/

Ecuador moves towards a "Citizen Revolution"

President Rafael Correa says that Socialism of the 21st century 
is a model that could break with neo liberalism

By Hernando Calvo Ospina

Those persons in charge of writing the new Constitution were elected on
September 30. The organization of President Rafael Correa Delgado,
Alianza País, won more than 70 percent of the votes. Such an
overwhelming triumph had never been seen before in the electoral
history of the nation.

With 80 representatives out of 130 the Alianza will have an absolute
majority in the Constituent Assembly giving the Head of State the
possibility of «re-founding the Republic» and move the country towards
a development model that breaks with neo liberalism.

In his unassuming office in Palacio de Carondelet, a colonial type
edifice, headquarters of government, President Correa explained what
Socialism of the 21st Century was as «applied to the particularities of
Ecuador».

«We propose a citizen revolution, of radical changes of deep and swift
changes of political, social and economic structures. Political
institutionalism of the country is exhausted. A congress that,
according to surveys, has only three percent of credibility is not
representative. Those groups that call for political parties are only
fiefs, caudillos, without the slightest inkling of an ideology. This
country cannot support what has been lived in an economic level of the
past 20 years through policies imposed by Washington and that have been
a disaster for Ecuador and Latin America. And that in our country,
among other things, has resulted in more than two million emigrants in
the past years.

«I am not concerned of how the United States government, the Europeans
or any other country see these changes. Much less what transnationals
think and want. My concern is the Ecuadorian people that are the rulers
and owners of this country. I expect that no nation, however powerful,
try to dictate our policies.

«We are also not going to accept that the Colombian government continue
to fumigate along the border because it is toxic for our citizens, our
vegetation, our animals, our waters ... Much less if that sister
nations wants to involve us in the internal fratricidal conflict of
that country. We will not get involved in that but if we can help
somehow to solve it, there we will be. We have said clearly that Plan
Colombia, a strategy of Bogota and Washington, is militaristic and
violent and has not served to offer a solution to that war. We receive
the negative effects of that Plan, beginning with the number of
Colombians who are forced to take refuge in our territory.

«To continue. To move this citizen revolution forward we need Socialism
of the 21st Century. Many told us to add the word «humanism». We said
no, because we are not afraid of that word. It is with socialism that
we find justice, equality, productive economy and generator of jobs.

«Our project is called that way because it has coincidence with the
scientific socialism of Marx and Engels. For example, here the people
should rule, not the market. The market must be the servants and not
the master. Human beings can no longer be treated as instruments of
production, in function of the needs of accumulation of the great
capital.

«Market economy has concentrated on the creation of merchandise and
their value regardless of the needs of the human being, nor the price
paid by the environment, etc.

«The importance of collective action is another coincidence with
classical socialism. We must overcome that fallacy of individualism as
the driving force of society where, by the wave of a wand, they made
egotism a rule of social virtue and competition a way of life. And that
is how they made us compete even with countries of the Third. World.
That is an absurdity. That forced us to cheapen our export products,
accept labor flexibility, lower salaries, etc. And, who won out?: the
so-called First World, foreign capital.

«We have differences with classical socialism. For example, today it is
very difficult to speak of state ownership of all the means of
production. But we must make them democratic. Although it is necessary
for the State to own the strategic means of production for the economy
of the nation and that, therefore, cannot be in private hands.

«One of the main errors of classical socialism is that it differed
little with the concept of development of capitalism. What it has
offered us is a quicker route and with more equality, to reach the same
concept of industrial development and increase production. Let us look
at the competition of the Soviet Union with the United States that
produced more. But it did not give us a different alternative of
sustainable development considering other dimensions, such as the
interaction with nature. That is one of the challenges of Socialism of
the 21st Century: to present a different proposal of development.

«Another difference and that will certainly shock some traditional
socialists. We must deal in principles and not in models. In this,
classical socialism was arrogant and overbearing. They always sent us
to such and such a page to find truths and solutions. They gave us
catechisms. That is a big mistake. We must adapt to the situations of
each country, without pre-established models. I say so as an
academician: I believe that any attempt to class such a complex process
and the advance of society, is condemned to failure.

«We have the great advantage and obligation to continue to build. We
cannot allow indisputable definitions, dogmas. We must not lose sight
of the essence of our force: creativity.»

[Colombian journalist living in France, Hernando Calvo Ospina, made
this interview as special correspondent of the French monthly, Le Monde
Diplomatique.]