Security & Strategic Review May 2011 (ISSN 1741-4202)

When President Rafael Correa failed to get more than the slimmest margin of approval for his plan to conduct a full-speed reform of the judiciary by committee, hopes were aired that he might choose to tread carefully. These were dashed almost immediately: Correa appointed his representative on the reform committee even before the official results of the 7 May referendum had come in, and within days his interior minister was threatening to impeach a judge who threw out the charges filed by the government against one of the purported key participants in the September 2010 police mutiny.