Alfredo Palacio

Alfredo Palacio at a conference in 2005

Luis Alfredo Palacio González (born January 22, 1939 in Guayaquil ) is an Ecuadorian politician and cardiologist . He was President of Ecuador from April 20, 2005 to January 15, 2007 . Before that, he was Vice President from January 15, 2003 under Lucio Gutiérrez . After his removal by the National Congress, Palacio was sworn in as the new president.

Palacio made in 1967 with a degree (Dr.) as a physician and surgeon at the University of Guayaquil, specializing in 1969 to 1974 in hospitals in Cleveland ( Case Western Reserve University ) and St. Louis in internal medicine and cardiology . Since 1980 he has been director of the National Institute of Cardiology (INCAP) that bears his name. He is Professor of Cardiology (since 1989) and Public Health (since 2001) at Guayaquil University.

From 1994 to 1996, Palacio was Minister of Health under President Sixto Durán Ballén . In the presidential elections in 2002 he joined Lucio Gutiérrez as a vice-presidential candidate for the combined list of the Gutiérrez party Partido Sociedad Patriótica 21 de Enero and the plurinational indígena movement Pachakutik and took over this office after the election victory. After an extraordinary session of the National Congress on April 20, 2005, Gutiérrez had been deposed for “giving up office”, Palacio was sworn in as the new president.

Palacio itself does not belong to any party and therefore has no organized support in the National Congress. He announced that he wanted to rule as President of the People and that he would strive for a structural reform of the state. He attempted to convene a constituent assembly by popular vote, bypassing the National Congress. However, the project failed in December 2005 at the country's highest electoral court, which did not approve the planned referendum. The Supreme Electoral Court is made up of representatives of the leading parties in parliament.

Palacios was appointed vice-president on May 4, 2005, and Alejandro Serrano, aged 74 when he took office, is close to the Partido Social Cristiano of ex-President León Febres Cordero , although he does not belong to any party . Among other things, he was mayor of Cuenca and MP and governor in Azuay . Other ministers were appointed from around the indigenous party Pachakutik and the social democratic Izquierda Democrática. At the beginning of August 2005, Economics Minister Correa , the government's most popular minister to date, resigned after just three months , as his program of rapprochement with Venezuela and the more hesitant servicing of foreign debts in favor of domestic welfare programs could not be implemented. (Correa was elected to succeed Palacios in November 2006.)

Overall, the Palacios government was characterized by high political instability. At the time of the election of his successor at the end of November 2006, the sixth Minister of the Interior and the sixth Minister of Economics and Finance had been in office since taking office in April 2005. The aforementioned Economics and Finance Minister resigned 20 days before the end of Palacios' term of office, so that the Minister of Labor provisionally his Took over tasks.

On January 15, 2007, Palacio handed over his official sash to his successor Correa as planned. He retired to his hometown of Guayaquil and started working as a cardiologist again.

Web links

• Biography on the website of the Ecuadorian Presidential Palace ( Memento of January 7, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) (Spanish)
• Comprehensive short biography of the Fundació CIDOB (Spanish)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ See Spiegel Country Lexicon, Ecuador - Current Development 2005.