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.
PHOTO: AFP
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."
In a country where Indians make up 30 percent of the 12.5 million population, Gutierrez is a dark-skinned mestizo like the majority of Ecuadoreans -- an exception to the rule of white Ecuadorean presidents.
Jaime Duran, a public opinion analyst, said racism is a factor in the opposition Gutierrez has faced in Quito, home to Ecuador's European-descended political and social elite.
"Poor people identify with him. The more educated the person being surveyed is, the more he hates Gutierrez, while the less educated he is, the more he supports him," Duran said.
Gutierrez said his power base is in the shantytowns of the cities and in the small towns of the interior.
PARLIAMENT CHAOS: Police forcibly removed Brazilian Deputy Glauber Braga after he called the legislation part of a ‘coup offensive’ and occupied the speaker’s chair Brazil’s lower house of Congress early yesterday approved a bill that could slash former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro’s prison sentence for plotting a coup, after efforts by a lawmaker to disrupt the proceedings sparked chaos in parliament. Bolsonaro has been serving a 27-year term since last month after his conviction for a scheme to stop Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva from taking office after the 2022 election. Lawmakers had been discussing a bill that would significantly reduce sentences for several crimes, including attempting a coup d’etat — opening up the prospect that Bolsonaro, 70, could have his sentence cut to
A powerful magnitude 7.6 earthquake shook Japan’s northeast region late on Monday, prompting tsunami warnings and orders for residents to evacuate. A tsunami as high as three metres (10 feet) could hit Japan’s northeastern coast after an earthquake with an estimated magnitude of 7.6 occurred offshore at 11:15 p.m. (1415 GMT), the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) said. Tsunami warnings were issued for the prefectures of Hokkaido, Aomori and Iwate, and a tsunami of 40cm had been observed at Aomori’s Mutsu Ogawara and Hokkaido’s Urakawa ports before midnight, JMA said. The epicentre of the quake was 80 km (50 miles) off the coast of
China yesterday held a low-key memorial ceremony for the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) not attending, despite a diplomatic crisis between Beijing and Tokyo over Taiwan. Beijing has raged at Tokyo since Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi last month said that a hypothetical Chinese attack on Taiwan could trigger a military response from Japan. China and Japan have long sparred over their painful history. China consistently reminds its people of the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, in which it says Japanese troops killed 300,000 people in what was then its capital. A post-World War II Allied tribunal put the death toll
A passerby could hear the cacophony from miles away in the Argentine capital, the unmistakable sound of 2,397 dogs barking — and breaking the unofficial world record for the largest-ever gathering of golden retrievers. Excitement pulsed through Bosques de Palermo, a sprawling park in Buenos Aires, as golden retriever-owners from all over Argentina transformed the park’s grassy expanse into a sea of bright yellow fur. Dog owners of all ages, their clothes covered in dog hair and stained with slobber, plopped down on picnic blankets with their beloved goldens to take in the surreal sight of so many other, exceptionally similar-looking ones.
RSS