Jamil Mahuad

Jamil Mahuad (2007)

Jorge Jamil Mahuad Witt (born July 29, 1949 in Loja , Ecuador ) is an Ecuadorian lawyer and politician . He was president of his country from August 10, 1998 to January 21, 2000, when he was overthrown in a coup . He was the political leader of the Christian Democratic Party Democracia Popular and before his presidency, among other things, a member of parliament and mayor of the capital Quito .

Origin, education and career up to 1998

Jamil Mahuad's father Antonio Mahuad Chalela had Lebanese ancestors, his mother Rosa Witt García German ancestors. He attended schools of the Salesians of Don Bosco and the Jesuits in Loja and Quito and studied law at the Pontifical University of Quito , where he received his doctorate in law in 1978.

Mahuad worked as a teacher and manager of a state company before President Osvaldo Hurtado appointed him Minister of Labor in 1983. With the assumption of office of the new president León Febres Cordero he lost this office.

In 1986 Mahuad was first elected to the National Congress for Hurtado's Democracia Popular Party. In 1988 he took part in the presidential elections, but finished only fifth behind Rodrigo Borja ( ID ), Abdalá Bucaram ( PRE ), Sixto Durán Ballén ( PSC ) and the military Frank Vargas . During his subsequent political break he earned a Masters in Public Administration at the John F. Kennedy School of Government of Harvard University .

In 1990 he was re-elected to the National Congress and in 1992 as mayor of the capital Quito. During his tenure, Quito became the new public transport a Trolebus called trolley bus . Mahuad also became a respected politician at the national level through the improvement of public services. In 1997 he was one of the leaders of the public resistance against President Abdalá Bucaram , who was ultimately overthrown.

Presidency

Mahuad won the runoff election of the 1998 presidential election against Álvaro Noboa, who was standing for the Bucaram party, with officially 51.16 to 48.86 percent of the vote. The defeated Noboa demanded a recount of the votes in view of the tight result, but the Supreme Court refused. Noboa then spoke of electoral fraud, an allegation that has since been neither proven nor refuted.

Mahuad's term began on August 10, 1998. One of his first significant acts was the signing of a peace treaty with neighboring Peru on October 26, 1998, which put an end to decades of latent conflicts that had last led to the Cenepa War in 1995 .

Soon after, Mahuad came under increasing criticism, especially because of his monetary policy . The country found itself in recession in 1998 following political instability and natural disasters caused by El Niño . The state budget showed a high deficit .

Mahuad was initially unable to raise taxes because his coalition partner, the Partido Social Cristiano (PSC), categorically rejected it. The reforms that were sought and undertaken in the structure of government spending and their financial consolidation did not have any short-term effects, as expected. Instead, a 1% tax on financial transactions was introduced.

This resulted in a tendency towards capital flight, especially from dollar investments. The tendency to invest in US dollars increased further and contributed to permanent devaluation pressure on the Ecuadorian currency, the sucre , which the central bank tried to alleviate by selling foreign currency reserves. In view of the inflationary pressure and the risk of economic destabilization, the central bank gave up the previously pursued peg of the Sucre, especially to the US dollar, on February 11 and made the devaluation possible. In March 1999, however, the currency reserves were at an all-time low, which at the same time paralyzed the issuance of new sucres and thus the possibility of lending to commercial banks.

During this time, in connection with currency destabilization and capital flight, some major banks went bankrupt, and other banks and financial service providers ran into financial problems. The Mahuad government resorted to the means of freezing all bank balances worth more than $ 500 for one year to prevent savers from extinguishing their balances; also were bank holidays decreed. In order to rescue banks that had run into financial problems and the deposits they had with them, they received additional loans from public funds, which they used in particular to buy dollars to cover their loans abroad.

Yet other banks collapsed. The government set up a bank deposit guarantee agency, but it did not work well. Customers received credit vouchers from the Treasury and the guarantee agency, which were issued in Sucre and which ultimately contributed to an increase in the money supply and further rising inflation rates, which turned the crisis of the financial system into a real economic depression. Many savers, especially small ones, lost large parts of their wealth, which became worthless due to bank failures, inflation and the devaluation of the sucre. Analysts then came to the conclusion that the measures aimed at bailing out the banks had ultimately exacerbated the general economic and banking crisis.

By the end of December 1999, inflation had reached such a level that on January 9, 2000 Mahuad announced the abolition of the sucre and the introduction of the US dollar as the currency in Ecuador. The exchange rate against the US dollar had fallen from 4,500 to 25,000 sucre per dollar within a year. The dollar was ultimately introduced at the latter rate.

Mahuad was overthrown on January 21, 2000 by a coup which was preceded by mass demonstrations, particularly by Indian associations . This was also due to the fact that the Mahuad government had already abolished part of the energy subsidies at the beginning of its term of office, which mainly benefited the lower and middle classes of the population. First, a triumvirate of Colonel Lucio Gutiérrez , chairman of the indigenous association CONAIE Antonio Vargas and former chief judge Carlos Solórzano took power, which was eventually transferred to the previous vice-president Gustavo Noboa .

Scientists in the USA

Mahuad left the country and settled in Boston . From April to December 2000 he was a fellow at the Institute of Politics at Harvard University . Since January 2001 he has held the same position at the Center for Public Leadership of the Kennedy School of Government at the same university, since July 2002 he has also been a Fellow of the negotiation program of Harvard Law School .

He has also been a visiting professor or visiting professor and has lectured on political ethics and government studies at various universities in the Boston area ( MIT , Boston University , Tufts University , Northeastern University ) and in the United States (including Yale University , University of Pennsylvania , University of Notre Dame , Santa Clara University ). In 2004/05 he was a lecturer for action skills at the University of St. Gallen .

Legal proceedings in Ecuador

A number of proceedings were pending against him in Ecuador, primarily related to the freezing of bank balances. The second criminal division of the Supreme Court suspended the proceedings against him on June 6, 2006. As a result, on July 20, 2006, representatives of the citizens' organization Ciudadanos Pro País and the then presidential candidate Rafael Correa filed charges of crimes against humanity under Article 7.1 , independently of each other, but almost simultaneously . of the Rome Statute , as the freezing and depreciation of bank balances would have caused great human suffering. In the Correas case, the press interpreted the ad as an election campaign maneuver. However, the process has been resumed, but will not be heard before the criminal chamber, but before the chamber for administrative disputes. On October 21, 2008, the Ecuadorian Attorney General Washington charged Pesántez Mahuad with misuse of public funds (Spanish: abuso de fondos públicos ). In 2014, he was sentenced in absentia to a 12-year prison term for embezzlement.

Web links

• Simón Espinosa Cordero, Jamil Mahuad Witt (1949) , in: Edufuturo , the educational portal of the prefecture of the Pichincha province (Spanish)
• Jamil Mahuad Witt , in: Biografías Líderes Políticos of the Fundaciò CIDOB (Spanish)
• Humberto Oña Villarreal, Dr. Jamil Mahuad , in: Explored , a portal of the daily newspaper Diario HOY (Quito; Spanish)
• Tabular curriculum vitae of the Geneva School of Diplomacy and International Relations (English)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Ciudadanía Informada, En 1998, la diferencia en segunda vuelta fue de apenas 2.33 puntos ( Memento of the original of September 27, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (Spanish) November 24, 2006; Retrieved December 4, 2006. 
2. ↑ Gonzalo Giraldo, Monthly Report September 1999 ( Memento of the original from December 12, 2006 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. the Inter-American Development Bank (Spanish). 
3. ↑ Kennedy School of Government, Center for Public Leadership, Fellows ( Memento of the original dated November 2, 2006 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , accessed December 3, 2006; Tabular curriculum vitae ( memento of the original from October 18, 2006 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. the Geneva School of Diplomacy and International Relations ; see also Jamil Mahuad, The Ethics of Governance , William P. Laughlin Lecture on January 12, 2005 at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University .  
4. ↑ La campaña de Correa y Damerval se trasladó ayer a las oficinas de la Fiscal ( Memento of the original of September 26, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , El Universo (Guayaquil) of June 21, 2006 (Spanish).  
5. ↑ J. Mahuad it acusado de peculado , El Comercio , October 22, 2008 (Spanish).
6. ^ Former Ecuador president sentenced . May 30, 2014 ( bbc.com [accessed January 20, 2020]).

predecessor	Office	successor
Fabián Alarcón	President of Ecuador 1998-2000	Gustavo Noboa