Lucio Gutiérrez

Lucio Edwin Gutiérrez Borbúa [ ˈlusi̯o ˈɛdwin guˈti̯ɛrɛs borˈbua ] (born March 23, 1957 in Quito ) is an Ecuadorian ex-military and politician. He was President of Ecuador from January 15, 2003 until his dismissal in a special session of the National Congress on April 20, 2005 . He is the leading head of the Partido Sociedad Patriótica, which he founded in 2001 .

Origin and military career

Gutiérrez is the son of a farmer and a nurse and grew up in Tena in the Napo province in the Amazon lowlands. He went through a classic military career from high school to officer of the cavalry . He holds degrees in civil engineering (1982) and in administration and military science (1995), both from the Escuela Politécnica del Ejército , the Polytechnic of the Armed Forces of Ecuador , and as a sports teacher from the Army Sports University in Rio de Janeiro (1996). He attended advanced courses in international relations and defense strategy at the Inter-American Defense College in Washington, DC. He also lectured at the Escuela Politécnica del Ejército . a. for geopolitics and analytical geometry . He is married to Ximena Bohórquez and has two daughters.

Gutiérrez had his first intensive contact with politics in 1997 when he was entrusted with the office of the so-called édecan , a presidential adviser for the army, under President Abdalá Bucaram . After his fall Gutiérrez kept the office under Bucaram's successor Fabián Alarcón Rivera until the scheduled end of his presidency in August 1998. Gutiérrez was then commander of a cavalry unit in Cuenca .

Coup on January 21, 2000

In November 1999 Gutiérrez was promoted to colonel ( coronel ) and refused to shake hands with President Jamil Mahuad at the official act on the occasion . This violation of the protocol became an open contradiction in January 2000, when Gutiérrez was elected one of the three members of a “National Junta to Save Ecuador” that wanted to take over government after a coup . Mahuad had previously turned large parts of the socially disadvantaged population against him through various economic policy measures, in particular the announcement of the dollarization of the country. There were demonstrations and riots. Gutiérrez stood against the president together with other colonels and allied himself with the Indian organization CONAIE . On January 21, 2000, demonstrators, supported by lower and middle ranks of the Army, stormed the National Congress, the Supreme Court and the State Audit Office and declared the removal of the existing government. Gutiérrez, the Conaie President Antonio Vargas (later Minister of Social Welfare under Gutiérrez) and the former President of the Supreme Court Carlos Solórzano took over the government as a triumvirate. A few hours later, the national junta was replaced by a government council, to which Gutiérrez was no longer a member. On January 22nd, the National Congress appointed the previous Vice President Gustavo Noboa Bejarano as the new head of state.

Gutiérrez and other colonels spent a good four months in prison before being pardoned by President Noboa.

2002 presidential elections

In June 2000 Gutiérrez asked to be allowed to rest his military posts and went into politics. He founded the Patriotic Society January 21 (PSP) party and devoted himself to populism . He also represented - like the Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez - Bolivarian ideas of a continental unity of South America. He formed an electoral alliance with the political arm of the Conaie, the pluricultural movement Pachakutik-Neues Land and with the Marxist Democratic People's Movement (MPD), but at the same time presented himself as a patriot and a Christian. In the election campaign he appeared as a candidate for renewal and the “center-left” modeled on Brazilian President Lula .

He won on November 24, 2002 in the second ballot with 54.3% of the vote against the populist entrepreneur Álvaro Noboa and was sworn in as president on January 15, 2003.

Presidency

Changing majorities and government reshuffles

Despite his dominant campaign theme of fighting corruption and poverty, Gutiérrez began his tenure with austerity measures. His liberal-conservative economic policy (among other things, he significantly reduced his opposition to the Free Trade Area of ​​the Americas and practiced a policy of systematic servicing of foreign debts) soon brought him into opposition to Marxists and the Indian movement, so that in August after the departure of the Pachakutik minister had to reshuffle the government. He tried to secure his ability to govern by getting closer to other parties. At first, the rather right-wing Social Christian Party (PSC) around ex-President León Febres-Cordero Gutiérrez seemed to want to support. In the course of 2004 the government's contacts with the populist Roldosist Party of Ecuador (PRE) around the exiled ex-President Abdalá Bucaram and with the PRIAN von Gutiérrez 'former opponent Álvaro Noboa intensified. Gutiérrez 'own party, the PSP, only had an average of 6 of the 100 seats in the National Congress during the 2003-2007 legislative period.

At the beginning of 2005, after two years of government, of the fifteen ministers in the original Gutiérrez government, only Commerce Minister Ivonne Juez de Baki (an original independent opponent of Gutiérrez who received 1.7% of the vote in the first round of the 2002 presidential election) and Defense Minister General Nelson Herrera and Vice President Alfredo Palacio in office. The Minister of the Interior Óscar Ayerve, sworn in in March 2005, was already the eighth holder of this office in the Gutiérrez government.

Dissolution and replacement of the Supreme Court

In December 2004, PSP, PRE and PRIAN voted in the National Congress to fill 27 of the 31 judge posts in the Supreme Court. This meant de facto the dissolution of the highest national court, although under the current constitution of Ecuador the judiciary enjoys autonomy and interference by the National Congress in the judiciary (such as the removal or nomination of judges) is not permitted.

The replacement of the Supreme Court with judges close to PRE, PRIAN and PSP is therefore seen internationally as in public opinion in Ecuador as an unconstitutional act of the Congress.

On the one hand, a failed impeachment proceedings against the president in Congress, in which the Supreme Court had sided with the presidential opponents, and, on the other hand, preparations for the return of the ex-president and PRE-leader Bucaram, exiled in Panama, to Ecuador were seen as the background various charges of corruption and embezzlement were pending during his tenure.

Bucaram returned to Guayaquil on April 2, 2005 after the new de facto President of the Supreme Court, Guillermo Castro, annulled the proceedings against ex-Presidents Bucaram and Noboa. Gutiérrez's predecessor Gustavo Noboa, who was in voluntary exile in the Dominican Republic over pending proceedings against irregularities in the renegotiation of Ecuador's external debt with the International Monetary Fund , traveled to Ecuador on April 3.

State of emergency and renewed dissolution

Meanwhile, the political structure in Congress was reforming to drive the removal of the new Supreme Court. Initially, however, no secure majorities were obtained. The governments of the provinces of Azuay , Chimborazo and Pichincha called on the people to go on a strike against the government ( paro ) on April 13th in order to force the government to remove the new Supreme Court. This possibility was also discussed in Guayaquil . However, the population did not respond to the call to the extent desired. In the south and in the center of Quito, however, protests ( cacerolazos ) began on April 13th . The protests, which increased over the course of the days, received or took over the designation Rebelión de los forajidos (Spanish for uprising of the muggers ), based on a derogatory remark by the President about the demonstrators . The protests were supported by the mayor of Quito, Paco Moncayo , the prefect of the Pichincha province, Ramiro González, and other officials from politics and business.

In response to the protests and the worsening political crisis, Gutiérrez made a televised address on the evening of April 15, 2005, declaring the Supreme Court dissolved and declaring a state of emergency for Quito.

High judicial officials said that neither the dismissal of the new court nor the declaration of a state of emergency were covered by the constitution, as the protests in Quito were peaceful. After 19 hours, the state of emergency was lifted again on the afternoon of April 16, and the removal of the Supreme Court remained. It was confirmed by Congress on the night of April 17th with the unanimous vote of the 89 MPs present. The constitutionality of the Sunday special session was again questioned.

Deposition

On the evening of April 19, protesters clashed with national security forces, in which a Chilean photojournalist died of heart failure using tear gas . The clashes continued on April 20. Among other things, the Ministry of Social Welfare was set on fire. The Vice Minister for Social Welfare, Bolívar González (PRE), was accused of organizing and paying for demonstrations for the President by Protestant Indian associations, in which Minister Antonio Vargas is a leader. The National Congress building was stormed by demonstrating students.

After Congress President Omar Quintana, one of the political leaders of the Bucaram PRE party, refused to include the replacement of the Supreme Court on the agenda of the April 20 session of Congress , a majority of MPs, particularly opposition parties PSC, Pachakutik and Democratic Left ( Spanish Izquierda Democrática ) the congress in the building of the Centro Internacional de Estudios Superiores de Comunicación para América Latina (CIESPAL). Under the leadership of the first Vice President of Congress, Cynthia Viteri (PSC), newly elected in the extraordinary session, the "opposition congress" first deposed Congress President Quintana and shortly afterwards President Gutiérrez with a majority of 58 and 60 votes respectively. Formally, they relied on the constitutional possibility of removing a president who was no longer fully exercising official duties through the Congress because of “abandoning the office” (span. Abandono de cargo ). Another time-consuming impeachment procedure could be avoided.

Shortly afterwards, the Commander in Chief of the National Armed Forces announced that the Army had withdrawn support from the President; the national police chief had resigned that morning. Gutiérrez, barricaded in the presidential palace, initially assured him that he would remain in office, but shortly afterwards left his official residence by helicopter. Apparently, protesters on the tarmac at Quito airport prevented a plane intended to take the president out of the country from taking off.

The "Opposition Congress" meanwhile determined the previous Vice President Alfredo Palacio as the new President. This was sworn in by Cynthia Viteri and stated in a speech that he would have the constitutional violations of the past months prosecuted. The meeting building was besieged by hundreds of demonstrators demanding the resignation of the entire National Congress. Some protesters broke into the building, where there were brawls with individual MPs. Palacio was initially unable to leave the building, but was then escorted by security forces to the Ministry of Defense, where he gave a press conference. He rejected early elections, but announced that he would call a meeting to revise the 1998 constitution.

The same evening, the Ecuadorian public prosecutor issued an arrest warrant against Gutiérrez, as police and army actions against the demonstrators based on his orders are said to have killed up to four people. Arrest warrants were also issued against Bolívar González and Abdalá Bucaram.

Exile and return

Gutiérrez asked for “diplomatic asylum” at the Brazilian embassy in Quito, which was granted to him by President Lula da Silva . On the morning of April 24, 2005, he was flown from Latacunga airport to Brasília on a plane belonging to the Brazilian armed forces . On June 7th he flew from Brazil to Miami . In the USA he ran a press and television campaign to draw attention to what he saw as the illegality of his deposition and the new government. In July 2005 he moved to Peru, where he settled in a hotel in Tumbes . At the end of September Gutiérrez traveled to Bogotá , where, according to media reports , he is said to have applied for political asylum , which Gutiérrez's lawyers denied.

Lucio Gutiérrez returned to Ecuador from exile on October 13, 2005. He was immediately arrested for mutiny on arrival at Manta Airport and taken to the García Moreno Prison in Quito . On January 3, 2006, Gutiérrez was transferred to the more comfortable Cárcel 4 Detention Center . His book about the events that led to his fall, El Golpe , published shortly before his return , was the best-selling book from Ecuadorian production in October 2005.

On March 3, 2006, the now transparently re-appointed Supreme Court dismissed Gutiérrez's mutiny lawsuit for lack of evidence and ordered the end of his pre-trial detention. After his release, the ex-president said he wanted to appeal to the Constitutional Court to be reinstated, but this has not yet happened. He was originally nominated by his party as a presidential candidate for the October 15, 2006 election, but on July 22, 2006 the Ecuadorian electoral body refused to be included in the candidate list. The Ecuadorian constitution rules out the direct re-election of the president. His brother Gilmar ran in his place and, to everyone's surprise, came third with 17.5% of the votes in the first ballot. Voting intent surveys had predicted him significantly less than 10%. Gutiérrez received high votes, especially in rural and remote areas, which are not covered by surveys. In all of the provinces of the Amazon basin, he took first place with in some cases more than 50% of the votes. Nevertheless, he did not move into the runoff election on November 26th.

Lucio Gutiérrez regained his right to stand as a candidate on May 13, 2008 and ran again in the presidential election on April 26, 2009 . With 28.2% of the votes in the first ballot, he received a higher proportion of votes than in 2002, but was defeated by the incumbent President Correa , who was directly re-elected with more than 52% of the votes. His PSP party forms the second largest group in the new National Assembly .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ TSE restituye derechos políticos a Lucio Gutiérrez  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Diario HOY , May 14, 2008 (Spanish)  

Web links

• Website of Gutiérrez 'Partido Sociedad Patriótica
• Literature by and about Lucio Gutiérrez in the catalog of the German National Library
• Gutierrez 'biography from Fundació CIDOB, last updated on January 1, 2006 (span.)
• El Abril de los Forajidos. Caída y fuga de Lucio Gutiérrez , online version of a special supplement to the newspaper Diario HOY (Quito), also published as a book , edited by Diego Araujo Sánchez, May 2005 ( ISBN 9978-311-06-8 ).

predecessor	Office	successor
Gustavo Noboa	President of Ecuador 2003 - 2005	Alfredo Palacio