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Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa announced Friday that he will review his decision not to run for reelection in the 2017 balloting, and said he will study the possibility of changing the constitutional restriction that prevents him, for now, from running for another term.
Correa said he is considering that possibility due to the progress made last Sunday by the right in local elections, when the opposition won five of the most populated municipalities in the country.
The leftist president called it his duty to review his “sincere decision” not to seek reelection because of the “storm clouds,” which, he said, menace his “citizens’ revolution.”
The Ecuadorian constitution allows a president to be reelected only once, after which the possibility exists to run again after being out of power for one term, so that the eventual reelection attempt suggested by Correa would require a new reform of the constitution approved in 2008.
Though he said the ruling party continues to be the No. 1 political force in the country, Correa admitted that the “painful” loss of the mayoralty of Quito, won by opposition pol Maurico Rodas, shows the right is growing more powerful.
“The right came out of this politically strengthened,” and the faction that won in Quito is “organized, with international support, with a strategy of power” and “is part of the new imperial offensive against the progressive governments of Latin America,” the president said.
Nonetheless, he said the loss of the mayor’s office of Quito lays bare the problems that face his Alianza Pais party, above all its overconfidence, sectarianism and the organizational weaknesses of the movement.
Published in Latino Daily News