Foreign press coverage of Ecuador this week was dominated by the judicial ruling coming down hard on the national daily El Universo. The widespread debate over press freedom in Ecuador is fully justified but what is really significant is President Rafael Correa’s attempt to discredit a potentially large protest march against his government, led by the umbrella indigenous organisation Conaie. During his weekend media broadcast, Correa claimed that “radical” indigenous movements were preparing to team up with “leaders of the extreme right”, backed by bankers and “the corrupt media”, enraged by the ruling against El Universo, to destabilise his government. What exactly is the march all about to cause him such concern?
President Correa habitually lumps all dissenting voices together, however poles apart they might be, as conspiring against Ecuador’s interests by threatening to destabilise his government. It is a tried and tested tactic when he really needs to discredit opponents and divert attention from the actual causes of their protest. In this case, Correa is keen to undermine a two-week protest march to Quito (from 8 March to 22 March) being planned by Conaie, and left-wing dissidents that broke away from his citizens’ revolution.
“They are trying to destabilise the government, it is their last chance, once this is over nobody will stop us in next year’s elections with or without me,” Correa said. In a reference to indigenous protests in Bolivia, he added “They want to do the same as they did to (President) Evo Morales: they failed there and they will fail here too.” Correa called for a big mobilisation in Quito on 8 March for “Women’s Day”, and is likely to call supporters onto the streets in a counter-march to coincide with the arrival of Conaie et al on 22 March.
Gustavo Larrea, a prominent former minister and a founder of Correa’s Alianza País (AP), said the “plurinational march for life, democracy and the defence of natural resources” had no intention whatsoever of destabilising the government. He said it simply sought to protest against government policies and to demand respect for freedom of opinion. Larrea is the leader of Participación, which is part of a movement set up a few months ago called Coordinadora por la Unidad de las Izquierdas, which is seeking to unite all of Ecuador’s historically fractured left-wing groups. It includes Pachakutik, Conaie’s political arm and the Movimiento Popular Democrático (MPD), an estranged ally of Correa’s.
Conaie released a statement emphatically denying that it would ever receive financial backing from “Guayaquil fascists”, a reference to Correa’s claim that the march was intent on securing the support of bankers and right-wingers, as well as the media. The president of Conaie, Humberto Cholango, said the march would demand approval of water laws, land to farm, and respect for the ancestral lands of indigenous peoples, on which it argued the government was preparing to award concessions to transnational oil and mining companies. Cholango announced the march as long ago as last September to demand that the indigenous should be consulted about such concessions.
Despite the professed commitment of Correa’s citizens’ revolution to consult the people, the indigenous request will fall on deaf ears. The government is at an advanced stage in negotiations with mining companies, and expects to sign accords within a matter of weeks, according to the non-renewable resources minister, Wilson Pástor. The Chinese company Ecuacorriente looks set to seal a deal to work on the Mirador copper mine, although the Canadian company, Kinross, is seeking to revise a tentative agreement reached last December to develop Ecuador’s largest gold mine, Fruta del Norte, because it is reluctant to pay about half its income, after production costs, in taxes and royalties. Pástor called its demands “unacceptable” last week.
The government, which is keen to lessen dependence on oil exports and boost social spending ahead of elections in 2013, claims that the two deals could bring US$2.8bn in investment over the next 30 months. Conaie is opposed to the proposed mining projects located in the southern provinces of Morona Santiago and Zamora.
- People in glass houses…
A jubilant President Correa said that the judicial ruling against the directors of El Universo showed that it was possible to win sentences against the clowns as well as the owners of the circus. The three directors of the paper were sentenced to three years in prison for criminal libel and a hefty US$40m fine in damages to Correa. The paper, which claimed that the ruling set “a very dangerous precedent for democratic life in Ecuador”, turned to international courts for the justice, they claimed, they were unable to get in their own country. Days later, on 21 February, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights echoed the chorus of concern expressed by the press across the region, by calling on the Correa administration to suspend the sentence until a hearing between the two parties can be held in late March.
This specific case and the wider issue of press freedom has been explored in detail in this publication in the recent past and does not require further recapitulation but one intriguing fresh angle to the case emerged this week. Panama’s President Ricardo Martinelli granted asylum to Carlos Pérez Barriga, one of the directors of El Universo, following a request based on “a reasonable fear” for his personal security. The move received accolades from organisations such as Ecuador’s association of editors (Aedep), but Correa described it as a ‘surprise’, pointing out certain incongruities given Martinelli’s own fraught relationship with the media in Panama. In particular, Correa highlighted Martinelli’s 2 January address to the nation in which the Panamanian president delivered a blistering attack on owners of media outlets that have proved critical of his government, accusing them of being empresaurios (business dinosaurs) and “thieves” for allegedly not paying taxes.
Martinelli’s diatribe against the media which, bar the media group Epasa which controls the national dailies El Panamá-América and La Crítica, is largely critical of his government, prompted 15 ex-presidents of Panama’s Chamber of Commerce, Industry and Agriculture to demand a public apology. Singled out for criticism was the leading newspaper La Prensa, whose founder, Roberto Eisenmann Jr, has covered government corruption cases such as the one involving the national land authority (Anati) [WR-11-39]. Eisenmann’s Desarrollo Golf Coronado S.A, has since received a US$3m fine from the revenue department (DGI) following an audit.
Martinelli’s efforts to present himself as a champion of press freedom also jar with more general concerns regarding freedom of expression in the country both at home and abroad. A Martinelli-backed bill proposing jail sentences of up to four years for those who “offend, insult, or vilify” the president or other government officials which, in January 2011, he was forced to retract, sparked outrage from local and international unions of journalists alike (see sidebar).
- Panama protests
The Panamanian authorities’ refusal to allow Rosie Simms, a Canadian journalist working for Canada’s ‘CBS’, to enter the country to cover the latest mining dispute [WR-12-07] was flagged up by the NGO Reporters without Borders (RWB) as confirmation of a “negative trend in Panama”. The RWB’s latest (2011-2012) ranking of press freedom by country saw Panama fall 32 places to 113th with the murder of a radio station owner and the ejection in 2011 of two Spanish journalists accused of instigating environmental protests against mining reforms singled out as particular cause for concern.
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