Osvaldo Hurtado

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Osvaldo Hurtado

Osvaldo Hurtado Larrea (born June 26, 1939 in Chambo , Chimborazo Province ) is an Ecuadorian politician and social scientist. He is the founder of the Democracia Popular party and was Vice President of Ecuador from 1979 to 1981, after the death of President Jaime Roldós he took over the presidency from 1981 to 1984. He was also President of the Constituent Assembly of Ecuador in 1997/98.

Life

Hurtado grew up in Riobamba , where he graduated from a school run by Jesuits in 1957 . He then studied law at the Catholic University of Ecuador , where he finally obtained a Licenciatura in social sciences in 1963 and a doctorate in law in 1966. He taught political sociology at the same university (1971–78) and at the University of New Mexico (on what was then Quito campus, 1973–78). He has also given a number of university courses in America and Europe and taught in Ecuadorian schools while still studying.

In 1964 he was a founding member of the new Christian Democratic party Partido Demócrata Cristiano (PDC), of which he became chairman in 1966. In 1969 he was briefly deputy minister in the Ministry of Labor during the fifth presidency of José María Velasco Ibarra . In 1972 he declared the PDC's support for the military junta around General Guillermo Rodríguez Lara , which had overthrown Velasco Ibarra. He became assessor of the General Council, but resigned from his service after a month.

Hurtado was since 1977 chairman of the legislative committee that created the framework for the democratic elections in 1978, and as a member of the Supreme Electoral Court in a leading role in the preparation of speech democratization after the military dictatorship. Politically, the PDC joined forces in 1977 with the Partido Conservador Progresista (a spin-off of the Partido Conservador Ecuatoriano ) led by Julio César Trujillo to form the new Democracia Popular party , which was not officially registered until 1979. In January 1978 he and Trujillo were briefly arrested and spent several days in prison. The Democracia Popular joined in coalition with the Concentración de Fuerzas Populares , whose candidate Jaime Roldós Hurtado had met in the legislative committee, to the presidential elections in 1978, in which Roldós and Hurtado were elected to the office of President and Vice-President respectively. After Roldós' death he became his successor on May 24, 1981. His presidency was marked by a deep crisis in the economy and public finances and the consequences of the El Niño phenomenon in 1982. Hurtado introduced reforms that did not have an immediate effect and, in the face of polarizing statements by the opposition leader León Febres-Cordero , who was sworn in as Hurtado's successor in 1984, were not immediately continued, but were replaced by a more liberal economic policy course.

Hurtado then withdrew from direct political life and devoted himself more to political advice, including in the Corporación de Estudios para el Desarrollo (CORDES) Institute he founded and funded by the Konrad Adenauer Foundation , and to work in international Christian Democratic associations Parties too. In 1997 he was the top candidate on the Democracia Popular list for the constituent assembly convened by his party, Jamil Mahuad , and was elected chairman. After the fall of Mahuad in 2001, he stood in the 2002 presidential election for his newly founded political movement Patria Solidaria , but received only 1% of the vote. The party soon disbanded. The Democracia Popular had supported its former Vice President León Roldós , who received 15.4% of the vote as an independent.

Hurtado has been married since 1968 and has five children. He is the author of numerous books, of which El poder político en el Ecuador (1977) is the best known and is considered the standard work on political science in Ecuador.

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personal data
SURNAME Hurtado, Osvaldo
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Hurtado Larrea, Osvaldo (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Ecuadorian politician, President of Ecuador
DATE OF BIRTH June 26, 1939
PLACE OF BIRTH Chambo , Chimborazo Province