Rafael Correa calls Lenín Moreno “crazy” and attacks Argentinian media

Rafael Correa is omnipresent in the elections this Sunday in Ecuador, although he is not a candidate. The former Ecuadorian president (2007-2017), sentenced in absentia to eight years in prison for corruption, lives as a refugee in Belgium and accuses the justice of his country of having persecuted him politically on the orders of the current president, Lenín Moreno , who was his dolphin. Correa is in Mexico for days from where he responds via Zoom and from where he will continue on Election Day.

Its candidate, the progressive Andrés Arauz, is the favorite in the elections.

Nobody disputes who will win, all the polls without exception give Andrés Arauz the winner. The discussion is who is second, if (the conservative banker) Guillermo Lasso or (the indigenista) Yaku Pérez, with how much difference and if we win in one round or not. I think there is an 80% chance of winning in a single round. And I hope so, because an elected president can stop the theft that this government is doing in its final months, can now seek vaccines to vaccinate our people and start seeking funding to overcome the worst economic crisis in the country’s history.

If Arauz won, what role would you play in his government? Would you like to return to Ecuador?

Election victory does not solve the legal problem, but neither is my intention to return. Andrés very kindly said that he would like to have me as a consultant, you can advise him via the Internet, because my life project is in principle to continue living in Belgium where my family also lives.

In recent days, his confrontation with President Lenín Moreno has intensified. You called it “garbage” after having linked it to the late Colombian guerrillas of the FARC. This tension, in a polarized Ecuadorian policy, does it not ensure that there are as many uncertain as the polls indicate?

I am not facing Lenín Moreno, I am facing his corruption, the destruction he has wrought in the country. If he accuses me of having a connection with the FARC, prove it and, finally, when they accused us of this, he was vice-president, why didn’t he tell that to that time. Lenín Moreno’s hypocrisy and his lies are evident. We are faced with a pathological liar. It scandalizes the hypocrisy of the press and the international community to want to present this as a simple dispute. Confrontation? This is the worst betrayal in the history of the country, it broke the country. Here there is no clash with someone like Lenín Moreno, who is in the trash of history, they will see the election results.

What happened between you and Lenín Moreno?

Once again, you are reducing the greatest betrayal in Ecuadorian history. But it’s not that it’s me. He won our government program at the polls and threw it in the trash, he opted for neoliberalism. Criminal persecution against what they call correistas would not have been possible in a civilized country either, and it has been possible in Ecuador due to obscene complicity in the press. But what happened? We have a madman, Moreno is mad. Stop thinking and suggest it’s a fight between two people, these are much deeper things.

How do you assess Moreno’s presidency over these four years?

Everything destroyed. We are leaving a growing economy. In 2017, we increased by 2.4% and now we will decrease by 11%. Absolute poverty tripled, we were again a very unequal country and a decline in all basic rights, in all public services.

How has the government handled the pandemic? How did you feel when you saw the images of corpses in the streets of Guayaquil?

They said these videos were fake news from the correistas! The response to the pandemic can only be characterized as criminal negligence. As we knew there was the new virus in Wuhan, we had to take precautions. Provide us with tests, tests … They didn’t do anything. Then increase the intensive care beds, get yourself respirators… They didn’t do anything. On the contrary, the agreement with Cuba ended and 400 Cuban doctors returned to Cuba in December 2019, including 74 epidemic specialists.

You were president in a context of left Latin American governments. Then the continent underwent a turn to the right, which again appears to be crumbling. What do you attribute this ideological pendulum to?

Commodities collapsed, including the price of oil, and all of Latin America, especially South America, which exports commodities, struggled economically. This was taken advantage of by the press, which in Latin America is the instrument of the elites to maintain the status quo, to maintain their privileges, to say that it had been a failure of our policy. Taking advantage of this, the coup d’état in Brazil took place: the world looked elsewhere. Or was it not a coup against Dilma (Rousseff)? In 2015 Argentina is lost, but strictly speaking it is not lost against (Mauricio) Macri: (Daniel) Scioli loses against Clarín, the opponent is the bourgeois press. Then there is the Ecuadorian betrayal: we won the elections, we lost power; those who lost the elections gained power because of Moreno’s betrayal.

Don’t you see Chavism as a regime that violates human rights? It is even stated by the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet, a socialist with whom you had very good relations as president when you were president of Chile.

Michelle Bachelet, to whom I hold dear, can also be wrong. In case, I traveled to Venezuela with José Luis Rodríguez, ask him. These are self-fulfilling prophecies. They block Venezuela, they make there is a fuel shortage, a drug shortage, a food shortage … so if there are demonstrations, they have to control the demonstrations and there is repression. This is the usual hypocrisy. Venezuela is blocked. Venezuela has a war economy. This is the real attack on human rights, on the rule of law. Lift the blockade and we can talk whatever you want.

What is your current situation in court?

I have 39 judicial inquiries, I have a jail order for alleged kidnapping and the last was the cassation conviction which they resolved in 17 working days. It’s a great hoax. Belgium has never given way to extradition despite enormous pressure from the Ecuadorian government. The judges have procrastinated, there is political persecution.