Rafael Correa: “For some, democracy is valid …

From Caracas

Rafael Correa has been in Venezuela since last Thursday. He was the first former president to arrive as an observer for the midterm elections on Sunday, where the great patriotic pole of Nicolás Maduro won with 68% of the vote. The Ecuadorian leader arrived in Caracas via Mexico sharing a flight with the Argentine delegation, of which this journalist is part as an observer for the Progressive International.

“How cold it was on the plane! I was worried because they served me a hot breakfast and you got nothing,” he said, welcoming us with his effusive manner, where the jugular fails to hide the smile and the salute collides with a closed fist. The interview takes place in the middle of a busy schedule of the ex-president, in a building located in downtown Caracas, a few blocks from Simón Bolívar’s house and the plaza of the same. last name.

-What is the importance of these legislative elections in Venezuela?

-Democracy in Venezuela continues, what happens is that for some, democracy is valid as long as they win the elections. These elections are exactly the same as in 2015 when the government lost and the opposition won, they were valid there (he says ironically). For some groups of radical right-wing movements that did not participate, it seems that they are no longer valid.

The distortion of what is happening in Venezuela is impressive. In all areas: the politician where they want us to believe that there is a dictatorship here; economically, they say the model failed when Venezuela is blocked. It has a war economy, it’s like I’m bombing Chile tomorrow and saying neoliberalism has failed.

– Speaking of the war economy, how is Venezuela analyzed, precisely on the basis of the blockade, of oil, of Nicolás Maduro’s decision to start generating openings to private capital?

-I don’t know how Venezuela survives, things are terrible. It sounds like a fantastic story, a lie. The country, which once had more than $ 50 billion in oil revenues, is now less than 500 million, hundredth part. This is how serious the situation is, a brutal blockade. Faced with these circumstances, it is necessary to make the legal framework more flexible in order to attract foreign investment. This is what President Maduro did with the anti-blockade law and I totally agree. What we cannot ignore are the consequences of this blockade. I do not understand the analysts and pseudo-professors who speak of the failure of Venezuela’s economic policies, of migration, while omitting that they are blocked, that they are in a war economy.

–What is the intention of this sector of the world, of this political-media right which, for example, in Argentina, has leaders like the president of the PRO of Macrismo (by Patricia Bullrich) who called on people not to go and vote ?

-Elections are valid as long as they win, democracy is valid as long as it is based on their interests. But when there is a risk that something will change in this democracy, they don’t care about ending the democracy. We have seen coups, destabilizations, etc. Then, surely, as this woman saw that her ally in Venezuela was not going to win the next elections, she wanted to delegitimize them by calling for abstention.

Correa wears a blue suit and a white Andean shirt with blue pre-Columbian embroidery. Customary clothing continues to be a message of national identity that it has not renounced. The room where the interview takes place is glazed. From the windows you can see part of the city. Outside the room, Fernando Lugo, the former Paraguayan president ousted by a soft coup in 2012, circulates pending a meeting, which is also among the former presidents monitoring with the Bolivian Evo Morales and the Spanish José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero.

-How do you see the current situation in Ecuador, the Arauz-Rabascall pair, your own ban?

-With triumphalism. We work as if we haven’t had a single vote, but all the polls put us in first place and a lot of them we won in one round. That’s the good part of the story, the bad part is that the government knows it. For this disastrous government (of Lenin Moreno), the worst thing in the world is that we win. They will have nowhere to hide, we are not looking for revenge but we are looking for justice. They committed terrible crimes: corruption, political persecution; They are ready for anything, anything (he repeats with outstretched hands). The pair have yet to be officially registered, which was registered on September 18 and has been challenged many times. More than two months later, the pair are not very firm, despite being the one dominating all the polls. Most likely, arguing about the problem of the pandemic, they want to postpone the elections to see how to defeat us or accept at the last minute a candidate breaking the electoral rules and impose a second round and in this second round unite against us. They are desperate, but we are as optimistic as we are triumphant.

Rafael Correa mentions the persecutions carried out by the government of Lenín Moreno. The report takes place with three Ecuadorian citizens exiled from their country: Correa himself with a conviction and arrest warrant in Ecuador; Fernando Alvarado, former official and campaign director of the citizen revolution, and Gabriela Rivadeneira, an important correista cadre and former president of the Ecuadorian Assembly. Each tells the story of when he had to leave Ecuador. The experiences produce the thrill of thinking of a repressive state apparatus looking for them in the city and friends calling and saying, as in the case of Rivadeneira and Alvarado: “Throw (throw your cell phone) right away, take your things, your children, and leave now because they will look for you ”.

Alvarado is here in Venezuela and Rivadeneira lives in Mexico with her two children. The former lawmaker reveals that the day President Andrés Manuel López Obrador gave him refuge, Mexico reopened the figure of political asylum after nearly 40 years of inactivity.

Debt, coronavirus, media

-How will the countries of the region emerge from external debt and pandemic situations?

-To beat the pandemic, we will need external aid and funding and it is better to do it together at the regional level, in coordination, to have a little more presence at the global level. Argentina is a special case. It is the most important financing in the history of the IMF, but it was done in an absolutely irresponsible way: this debt to the IMF was not used to finance roads, hydroelectric plants, increases in reserves, but rather capital flight. Argentina was in debt, the economy in crisis and money lost.

– A few minutes ago, you said that in 2015 “it was not Macri but Clarín who triumphed”.

– As long as we do not solve the media problem, Latin America will have neither democracy nor development. Sometimes we don’t give it the importance of certain issues. What are the media doing? Let us know. In principle, they should be the keepers of the truth; in Latin America, they were the first to steal this truth. Without truth, without information, we have no democracy, there are no free elections, they manipulate us, there are no correct political decisions, there are no correct decisions of political action and without it there will be no development. The main opponents of progressive governments are the media.