The Ecuadoran parliament, seeking to defuse a political crisis that has threatened the rule of left-leaning President Lucio Gutierrez, voted late on Sunday to dismiss members of the country's Supreme Court following mass street protests against recent judicial reforms.
The resolution, championed by the opposition and approved unanimously by all the members of Congress, takes effect immediately.
The measure effectively invalidates judicial reforms pushed through the legislature by members of the ruling coalition on Dec. 8 that have sparked popular unrest in the capital and other parts of the country.
PHOTO: AFP
Congress also created a special commission that will designate 31 new members of the Supreme Court as well as outline their future prerogatives.
The dispute over the role of the high court came to a head late on Friday, when Gutierrez declared a state of emergency in the capital to quell the protests.
The president lifted the emergency decree the following day, but the about-face hardly removed the underlying cause of the unrest.
Massive discontent was sparked by a bid by the ruling party to restructure the Supreme Court that was immediately blasted by the opposition as an attempt by the government to establish control over the judiciary.
About 10,000 people took to the streets of Quito banging pots and pans and demanding the resignation of the left-leaning president.
"Lucio out!" chanted the demonstrators. "Yes to democracy, no to dictatorship!"
Several labor unions launched a series of 24-hour strikes, blaming the president for attempts to manipulate the high court in order to consolidate his power.
Some schools have closed, but banks have remained open.
But the strikes have largely not affected the country's strategic port city of Guayaquil, and that was seen as a setback for the opposition.
Protesters have been infuriated by the Supreme Court's decisions not to put on trial former presidents Abdala Bucaram, who ruled from 1996 to 1997, and Gustavo Noboa, who was president from 2000 to 2003.
Bucaram had lived in exile in Panama, while Noboa had found refuge in the Dominican Republic.
But the court decision allowed the former leaders, both allies of Gutierrez, to return to Ecuador earlier this month.
"I am a nuclear bomb for the Ecuadoran oligarchy," Bucaram declared, pointing out that he planned to run for president again.
In an interview with foreign journalists earlier on Sunday, Gutierrez insisted he had no plans to step down, saying only 1 percent of Quito residents would favor such an outcome.
But Gutierrez hinted that a lost battle of the judiciary could pave the way for his departure.
"Only if my efforts to depoliticize the courts fail will it be possible for me to consider what you are asking me about," he said.
The congressional resolution on Sunday immediately sparked debate over all previous rulings of the Supreme Court, including the decisions not to hold the Noboa and Bucaram trials.
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion