ANALISIS DE LA GESTION DE GOBIERNO DEL ING. LUCIO GUTIERREZ Y SU REPERCUCION EN LA ECONOMIA NACIONAL PERIODO 2003-2005

Abstract

Since the 80’s of the last century the design of the economic politics in our country has been defined by the fluctuations of the economy’s outside sector. The dominant situation has been the deficit of the current account, in which the stabilization cost has affected almost all of the social groups, especially those in a weak economic situation. The economic principles that have been applied with the reform are: market priority, privatization, commercial openness and free capital flux, trying in the majority of these the elimination of the “benefactor state” and the integration of the national economy to the globalization process – the most wanted dream for North America’s homogeneous consolidation. The rejection to these policies was expressed on the elections. On January 15 2003 President Gutierrez assumed power in the middle of an acute fiscal crisis and deep indebtedness which seriously compromised the possibilities of an economic program of popular character. His government plan pretended to end corruption and renew political practices, but his political power to carry on these reforms was scarce. It was foreseeable that in a short term the new president’s popularity would begin to erode.President Gutierrez’s problems began 6 months after reaching presidency, when he saw himself obligated to fire several of his ministers whom belonged to the Pachacutik Indian Party, which resulted in the rupture of the government alliance. The Indian movement crisis was produced when President Gutierrez maintained the dollarization of the Ecuadorian Economy and came to terms with the North American government on the fight against drug trafficking and the Free Market Treaty Agreement. Since then, the president had to confront opposition from the parliament – where his party only had 7 congressmen of a total of 100 – on his privatization projects of the oil and electric, institutional reforms and the social security modification. A distancing between the president and the vice-president, Alfredo Palacio, was also produced. President Gutierrez started being accused of wrongful use of public money, bribes and felonies against State Security. For example on November 2003, president Gutierrez confronted his first crisis of this type, when it was revealed that the people controlling his electoral campaign had received a $30.000 contribution from the Fernandez Cevallos family, at the same moment when one of its members was being investigated for drug trafficking activities. On September 2004 the congress opposition sector, pretended to submit the president to a political trial when President Gutierrez allegedly had been meeting, at the beginning of that month in Panama, with Ex-President Abdalá Bucaram. But the new alliance that Gutierrez established with the PRE, led by Bucaram and PRIAM and controlled by the banana magnate Alvaro Noboa, stopped the process. This new alliance allowed the congress, based on a Constitutional transitory clause, to replace, on December of that year, 27 of the 30 Supreme Court judges. This occurrence generated a strong political and social convulsion that established the final crisis. The conflict was intensified when the new Supreme Court President, Guillermo Castro, nullified, on April 1st, the corruption trials against Ex-president Bucaram and Ex-vice-president Dahik, whom returned to Ecuador at the beginning of April. By this time surveys on the president’s popularity was only 6%. On Saturday April 16th 2005 under pressure of mobilizations, President Lucio Gutierrez appealed to the National Security Law to decree an “Emergency State”, which suspended civil rights, mobilized the Army and gave the Executive Branch the faculty to intervene in the other State Branches. In the same decree, the president ceased the questioned Supreme Court and justified himself by explaining that he had to put an end to the political crisis, using the special powers given to him by the “Emergency State”. On April 19th the disturbances started to get more violent which led, on Wednesday 20 of the same month, the unicameral parliament to cease president Gutierrez with 60 votes of the 62 present legislators, leaving Ecuador in a deep economic, social and political crisis that did not change with the passing of Colonel Gutierrez on the presidency