Thousands of protesters marched on Tuesday night on the National Palace to demand that Ecuador's embattled President Lucio Gutierrez step down, just hours after he said he had no intention of resigning.
"There is not the least possibility. I was elected for four years. My government ends in January 2007," Gutierrez said defiantly in an interview at the Government Palace.
As he spoke, army troops carrying assault rifles manned positions behind barbed wire to keep protesters from approaching the palace, located in Quito's Spanish-era colonial downtown.
Hours later at least 30,000 people, the largest demonstration so far against Gutierrez in Quito, tried to march to the palace to demand that he resign. But hundreds of police firing tear gas drove them back at a point 15 blocks from the palace. Small groups of protesters managed to get by the first blockade and regrouped four blocks from the building where more police blocked their advance.
"We want to show this president how much people dislike him. He has broken the Constitution so often that people can't take it any more," said Ricardo Viedma, 33, owner of a travel agency, as protesters tried to escape the gas that drifted over the streets.
The Red Cross reported that a 58-year-old Chilean freelance photographer died from a heart attack while covering the protests.
Gutierrez, 48, a cashiered army colonel elected in 2002 with a confrontative governing style, has had to deal with street protests demanding his ouster since last Wednesday. The demonstrators accuse him of trying to illegally control the three branches of government.
Gutierrez was jailed for four months for leading a rebellion in 2000 that toppled former president Jamil Mahuad in the midst of Ecuador's worst economic crisis in decades. He was expelled from the army after being released.
On Monday night tens of thousands of protesters poured into the streets in Guayaquil, Ecuador's largest city, to demand Gutierrez step down, joining demonstrators who have taken to the streets in Quito. There were also smaller protests in the cities of Machala on the Pacific coast and Cuenca and Riobamba in the Andean highlands.
Gutierrez dissolved the Supreme court on Friday to try to placate protests after his congressional allies in December fired most of the court's judges and named replacements sympathetic to his government. That move was widely viewed as violating the constitution, and critics accused him of attempting an institutional coup to consolidate his power.
He also declared a state of emergency on Friday that banned public protests in Quito. But the moves only escalated the street marches.
Looking relaxed and confident, Gutierrez said he was not worried that Congress might make another attempt at impeaching him. Opposition legislators failed at an impeachment attempt in November, and some legislators are seeking a new try.
"It doesn't worry me because they're going to continue. If I give them heaven, they're going to say they don't want heaven but hell. So I'm not going to worry about those threats," he said.
"In Ecuador when there is an earthquake, they blame the president. When there is a drought, they blame the president. When prices don't go up, they say it is the work of God, not the president," he said.
Speaking of himself in the third person, he said: "The people in opposition in Quito say, `Get out, Lucio,' but why `Get out, Lucio,' if Lucio has lowered inflation to around 1.5 percent, the lowest inflation in the history of Ecuador, if for the first time in 25 years of democracy, the costs of basic services" like electricity, phones and bus fares "have not increased. There is no reason for people to demand the resignation of Lucio Gutierrez."
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