Rodrigo Borja

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Rodrigo Borja

Rodrigo Borja Cevallos (born June 19, 1935 in Quito ) is an Ecuadorian politician , lawyer and university professor. He was President of the Republic of Ecuador from 1988 to 1992 and is currently Secretary General of the Union of South American Nations .

Borja, a descendant of the branch of the Borgia family who emigrated to Chile and Ecuador , first studied political and social sciences at the Universidad Central del Ecuador (UCE). He graduated in 1958 and received his doctorate in law in 1960 . During his studies he worked for Radio HCJB and the newspaper El Comercio . He later worked as a lawyer and professor for constitutional law and is the author of constitutional textbooks.

He was elected to the National Congress in 1962 for the Liberal Party ( Partido Liberal ), which, however, was dissolved the following year after a military coup under Ramón Castro Jijón . In 1966 Borja was appointed to the commission of lawyers who were supposed to advise a newly convened constituent assembly. In 1967, a group of young lawyers around Borja split off from the Partido Liberal in order to found a non-Marxist left party, the Democratic Left ( Izquierda Democrática ), which was baptized in 1969/70 , and Borja became chairman. In 1970 and 1979 he was re-elected to the National Congress for his new party. The Congress, elected in 1970, did not meet due to another military coup.

In 1978 and 1983 Borja ran for his party's presidential candidate. In 1978 he failed with 12 percent of the vote as fourth in the first ballot. In 1983 he was defeated in the runoff election to later President León Febres Cordero , who received 51.1 percent of the vote, although Borja's victory was previously considered more likely. In the third attempt, he won the presidential elections on January 31 and in the runoff election on May 8, 1988 against Abdalá Bucaram . Borja took office on August 10, 1988. Like hardly any other president after him, he was able to rule with a stable parliamentary majority. His term of office lasted until August 10, 1992, when the newly elected President Sixto Durán Ballén took office.

He ran again in the 1998 and 2002 presidential elections. In 1998 he took third place in the first round of elections with 15.7 percent of the vote, behind the later President Jamil Mahuad and Álvaro Noboa . In 2002 he finished fourth with 14.1 percent of the votes in the first round behind the later President Lucio Gutiérrez , Álvaro Noboa and León Roldós .

In 2004 he announced his withdrawal from national politics and resigned as chairman of the Izquierda Democrática. On May 9, 2007 he declared himself ready to take over the office of Secretary General of the international organization Union of South American Nations (Unasur), which was currently being established and based in Mitad del Mundo near Quito, but gave up shortly before formal due to the in his view insufficient competencies Establishing the organization on the office.

Web links

predecessor Office successor
León Febres Cordero President of Ecuador
1988 - 1992
Sixto Durán Ballén