Word: correa
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...campaign rallies, supporters shout "Dale Correa," a play on Correa's last name that means "Give them the belt!" On the stump in the rural highlands town of Latacunga last week, the dark-skinned but blue-eyed Correa spoke in the indigenous Quichua language: "The political and economic elites have robbed everything from us, but they cannot steal our hope. We will take back our oil, our country, our future!" And like Chavez, Correa wields his tongue like a belt at the U.S. Asked about Chavez's recent "devil" diatribe at the United Nations, Correa told an Ecuadoran TV network...
...election very much defined by U.S.-related issues. One is whether Ecuador will keep letting the U.S. use the Manta air base on the Pacific coast for drug surveillance flights - or if Ecuador will even continue to assist Washington's drug war, particularly the multibillion-dollar Plan Colombia. (Correa says he would not renew the Manta treaty when it expires...
...Another is the growing ill will among Ecuadorans toward foreign and U.S. firms like Occidental Petroleum, which recently had its operating contract in Ecuador revoked and $1 billion of its assets there seized for what the government called "unethical and illegal actions." (Occidental denies the charges.) What's more, Correa has pledged to kill free-trade talks with the U.S.; he has threatened to freeze Ecuador's foreign debt payments and says the country's economy should not "indefinitely" remain dollarized. (Ecuador switched its currency to the dollar in 2000.) Says Michael Shifter of the Inter-American Dialogue think tank...
...Correa denies suggestions that the oil-rich Chavez is helping to fund his campaign, and Chavez, since watching his outspoken support of the leftist candidates in Peru and Mexico backfire, has been uncharacteristically quiet about Ecuador. But analysts like Shifter notes that Correa, who recently visited Chavez, feels confident he can follow the Venezuelan's lead...
...After his own anti-establishment election victory in 1998, Chavez was able to rewrite Venezuela's Constitution, dissolve its Congress and create a new, unicameral National Assembly dominated today by his allies. Correa's fledgling party has submitted no congressional candidates for Sunday's election, an almost sure sign that if he wins, he intends to dissolve and re-create Ecuador's legislature in his own populist image. Like Chavez, "Correa is converting his [organizational] weaknesses into virtues and, under the guise of democracy, he'll fashion a Congress favorable to his political project," says Ramiro Crespo, president...