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Weekly Report - 1 March 2012 (WR-12-09)

ECUADOR: Correa’s clemency carries threatening undertones

There can be few recent examples of a pardon bestowed so begrudgingly. President Rafael Correa claimed in an epic letter this week that he had decided in his heart some time ago that he would drop the charges against the three directors and columnist of the daily El Universo whose sentence to three years in prison and a US$40m fine for criminal libel was upheld last month. Correa said he would forgive, but pointedly not forget. In a letter addressed to “my people, our America and the world”, he sought to depict himself as wronged and misrepresented but magnanimous in victory despite the fact that the sentence was “deserved” and a sign that “abusive media power” could be defeated. That he then went on to rail against a media dictatorship and to call for the region to rise up to confront it suggests that media freedom will be a big issue in the run-up to elections in April 2013.

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