Andean Group - January 2015 (ISSN 1741-4466)

Ecuador’s President Rafael Correa marked his eighth anniversary in power on 15 January. Correa spent the day in Yachay, Ecuador’s City of Knowledge, which he sees as the crown jewels of his ‘Citizens’ Revolution’. The main media focus, however, driven by Correa himself, was on one day in the middle of his tenure to date: 30 September 2010 or, as it is commonly known, 30-S. Correa has striven to prove that he survived an attempted coup on that day after mutinous police in northern Quito kept him surrounded in a military hospital before he could be rescued by special forces. Now, however, the former head of the joint command of the armed forces who led his rescue has published his own account of events. Correa was distinctly unimpressed – and let it be known, triggering a spat with senior retired members of the military in the process.

President Correa was in Yachay for the start of a four-day Innopolis science and technology fair entitled ‘Knowledge is Freedom’ (see box below). He has made no secret of the fact that he wants the City of Knowledge to be his enduring legacy. Yachay is the most visible example of the change Correa is seeking to promote in Ecuador; change which he argues provokes the hostility of a “self-serving and mediocre” elite determined to destabilise his government and seize any opportunity to oust him. The only time when this arguably came close to occurring was 30-S. On this day Correa visited a police barracks in northern Quito to address police disgruntled over salary and benefit cuts. As the police grew mutinous, Correa had to be whisked away to a nearby military hospital, where he was trapped for 10 hours, famously shouting from one of the windows, “Come on then, if you want to kill me, here I am”.

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