Two crucial votes over the last week show that congress retains a key role as a check and balance on the administration of President Rafael Correa. Correa might have tipped the balance of power away from congress and towards his government in recent years but “swing deputies” are ensuring that the most politicised and highly controversial bills are being thrown out while legislation important to the Correa administration’s policy agenda is making it through the national assembly. The disparate opposition and independents voted en masse last week to block a resolution by the ruling party Alianza País (AP) condemning “an attempted coup d’état” on 30 September 2010, while an anti-monopoly bill which, among other things, enshrined in law parts of May’s national referendum, got the green light.
The congressional opposition left the national assembly for the fourth time in recent weeks to deny the AP quorum on 29 September for a vote on a resolution, which would not only brand “30-S 2010” as “an attempted coup d’état” but also implicate the press in the “campaign” that led to the infamous police mutiny. Even the singer Gerardo Morán, an independent who often votes with the AP, refused to vote for the resolution. The opposition also accused the government of trying to manipulate the truth, turn 30-S into a new public holiday, and launch a poorly disguised electoral campaign ahead of presidential elections in 2013.
The government commemorated the first anniversary of the police mutiny on 30 September, which it dubbed “the triumph of democracy”. Addressing a crowd of tens of thousands of supporters in the north of Quito, Correa said that those who were unable to beat him at the ballot box would resort to “sedition, conspiracy and destabilisation” to remove him from power. He blamed “international forces for conspiring and financing these movements”, including the US National Endowment for Democracy (NED). He also claimed in his speech that police officers who responded to units that had depended in the past on the US embassy, or had connections with opposition political groups, were behind the uprising.
Correa’s lack of faith in the police has led him to turn to the military to carry out former policing roles. In an unusual appearance on television the head of the joint command of the armed forces, General Ernesto González, flanked by the top brass, underlined his “respect for state institutions”. He stopped short of branding 30-S a coup but he said Correa had been held hostage by “rebels who put his physical integrity at risk”.
Key anti-monopoly bill approved
President Correa’s frustration with the national assembly for blocking the passage of the resolution on “30-S” was mitigated by the “great news” of the approval of a “necessary and urgent” anti-monopoly law, with a majority of 67 votes with 34 abstentions. The government says the law is crucial to regulate and control markets to avoid abuses by monopolies. Correa said such a bill had been in place in the US for the past century.
A regulatory board and a superintendent will be empowered to fix prices and order companies to divest themselves of parts of their business in order to restore competition, especially to protect domestic production. The law also sets a deadline of July 13 2012 for those with more than a 6% stake in national media companies to sell up as per May’s referendum.
The new law was not universally rejected by the business sector, as some of the foreign press implied, although the president of the chamber of industry, Pablo Dávila, said the government’s new power to restrict competition by decree for the development of strategic sectors, for instance, could lead to state monopolies.
