ECUADOR’S PRESIDENT CORREA: IF YOU DON’T PAY ECUADOR MONEY, WE WILL KILL THE AMAZON
13 January 2010Ecuador Faces Political, Economic, Judicial and Social Decline
Rafael Correa, President of Ecuador
Ecuador’s President Rafael Correa has threatened to drill for oil in one of the most biologically important and pristine areas of the Amazon River.
Fander Falconi, the country’s foreign minister, resigned yesterday after President Correa criticized his handling of negotiations to wrestle money from foreign governments interested in preserving a swath of virgin forests along the Amazon River.
Falconi was the 3rd government official to quit over a plan to seek international donations of $3 billion over the next decade to keep an estimated 900 million barrels of heavy crude oil under the ground in the remote Yasuni National Park.
International news reports have said prospective donors have demanded some control over how the money is spent and asked Ecuador to expand the amount of land protected from development under the initiative.
Correa blasted the international community Saturday, calling their conditions to preserve the Amazon an ”unacceptable” and ”embarrassing” affront to Ecuador’s sovereignty.
”If they don’t accept our conditions, they can keep their money and we’ll drill,” Correa said in his weekly radio address.
Two members of a three-man government committee appointed to oversee the Yasuni fund resigned on Monday over the comments, followed by Falconi on Tuesday, according to the New York Times.
Correa has set a June deadline for the Yasuni initiative to be implemented.
Ecuador, a member of OPEC, depends on oil for a third of its national budget. The oil fields in Yasuni represent 20 percent of the country’s crude oil reserves.
Falconi is one of the founders of Correa’s Alianza Pais party. He served for more than two years as Correa’s third foreign minister.
This international controversy comes on the heels of Correa’s closure of a regional television station that has been critical of his presidency, a growth in the country’s unemployment rate to 7.9 percent and growing international and Latin American concern over Ecuador’s ties to the repressive government of Iran.
Lastly, international business, legal and political observers are still shocked by the bribery scandal that rocked the Correa administration this last year and caused the judge in a case accusing Chevron of oil pollution to unexpectedly resign. It is widely believed that Ecuador’s judicial system is corrupt and that the new judge–who serves at the pleasure of President Correa–will find Chevron guilty of $27 billion in damages in Ecuador in a decade-long legal battle from when Texaco (later acquired by Chevron) operated as a minority partner with state-owned Petroecuador. Chevron is expected to appeal the monetary judgement, anticipated in the coming months, to an unbiased international court and win where the rule of law prevails, leaving the Correa administration and its justice system further tarnished.
See Related: ECUADORAN JUDICIAL SCANDAL
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