Ecuadorian general election, 2013

[Famous Mortimer]

Candidates are:

Rafael Correa (Chavez-y)
Guillermo Lasso (supported by a coalition of the traditional conservative, social democratic, and liberal parties)
Alberto Acosta (supported by Marxist and indigenous oriented parties that broke away from Correa's coalition)
Lucio Gutierrez (former president. Started out Chavez-y but was overthrown for being too moderate, came in second in last election)
Álvaro Noboa (Evil capitalist candidate, came in third in last election, second in the one before that)
Nelson Zavala (candidate of the Roldosista Party, too hard to explain)
Norman Wray (candidate of something called Ruptura 25)

Correa will win.

[Famous Mortimer]

Lucio Gutierrez got elected on a True Leftist platform, but governed as a right-winger and in the process pissed off the left and got shafted. He retains a good base of support with natives, because he's a native himself.

Looking back at the results of the last election, I see he was backed by the Christian Social Party. Wow. I didn't realize he had gone that far to the right. Is he even pretending to still be a leftist?

[Famous Mortimer]

Also, does anyone know what the deal with Alberto Acosta is? Did the MPD and the Pachakutik people break away because Correa was too moderate or because he was too autocratic?

[Famous Mortimer]

Your description of Correa's Alianza PAIS resembles me a bit the present-day Ortega's FSLN (sandinistas), I don't know why. Acosta would be like Edmundo Jarquín of the Sandinista Renovation Movement (MRS). Jarquín got 6.4% in 2006 and in 2011 the MRS went in coalition with the center-right PLI (all-together-against-Ortega). Daniel Ortega -in my opinion, this ally of Chávez is arguably even worse than Correa because is corrupt- got 38% in 2006 and 62.7% in 2011.

I'm going a bit off-topic. Your posts are very interesting, Sir John. Hope that you could tell us more about Lasso, the apparent runner-up.

Defo see the Sandinista comparisons. Remember one of Ortega's running mates was a former Contra leader.

[Famous Mortimer]

I was going to ask about the Democratic Left. Just go with your own instinct about what to tell us.

[Famous Mortimer]

Great fun reading your stuff but I'm going to try to condense it all into one paragraph. Tell me if you think this is a fair summary:

In the beginning there were two blocs in Ecuadorian politics, the Liberals in Guayaquil and on the coast and the Conservatives in Quito and in the interior. Both blocs have basically remained although the parties that represent them have shifted around. The Liberals were pro-business, free-marketers. Guayaquil and coast have more or less retained that ideology. The interior of the country is weirder. If you want to sum up all the different political movements from that region, the best you could probably do is to call them "illiberal." The original Conservative Party were pro-military, pro-church statists. In the middle of the twentieth century, the more First World style conservatives broke away from the Conservative Party to establish the Christian Social Party. Quickly, however, this party was embraced by former Liberals on the coast, who, again, had the same basic pro-business ideology. The mainland was then represented by a number of different movements, Velasco Ibarra and his supporters, various Falangist and quasi fascist parties, the vaguely populist CFP, and then in the 80s, the Democratic Left. For a while in the 80s it looked like Ecuador might develop into a more or less normal European style political system with the Christian democratic Social Christian Party on the right and the SI affiliated Democratic Left on the opposite side of the spectrum. However, Ecuador is still too poor for any party to remain popular after serving a term in office, so both of those parties largely collapsed. They still maintain a base among urban professionals in home cities of Guayaquil and Quito but most of the population moved on to flashier, more bombastic parties. The Social Christians split and the interior of the country threw their support to party dissident Sixto Durán Ballén. Of course, although he was a dissident conservative, he was still a conservative, and when he governed like one, his base totally evaporated. Since then, it's been a total clusterf--f, with the coast being represented by PRAIN, Gutierrez (for lack of anyone else), and now CREO. While the interior of the country was represented by  Bucaram (for lack of anyone else), the DP, Gutierrez, and now Correa. The end result being that the coast is right-wing and the interior is left-wing, which is amusing because that's the opposite of the way it started, although Ecuador didn't really change, just what was considered left and right did.

[Famous Mortimer]

John, I hope you are able to recap the 2009 election.

The endorsements as recorded by Wikipedia are quite unbelievable. It says the PRE endorsed Correa and the PSC endorsed Gutierrez. Additionally that the ID supported Correa, what was their problem with Martha Roldos?

[Famous Mortimer]

Confirmation that the one PRE person elected was Dalo Bucaram?