by the El Reportero’s wire services
Rafael CorreaReports LatinNews – Ecuador’s President Rafael Correa has taken several gambles since coming to power in 2007 – but none bigger than now. Correa signed an executive decree on 15 August paving the way for the exploitation of oil in the Yasuní national park.
He blamed “the world” for failing to back his government’s innovative proposal to pay Ecuador to leave the oil untapped, but in truth he had long since split from the “infantile leftists” with which he co-founded the ruling Alianza País (AP), and departed from the spirit of Pachamama which infuses his constitution.
He has embraced extractive industries to spur Ecuador’s development even more than his neoliberal forebears. Yasuní, however, was the last redoubt, a source of national pride cultivated by his government. Indigenous groups and an emasculated opposition now have a rallying point for protests.
PRD launches offensive to prevent privatization of Petroleos Mexicano
With no change to the Constitution, progressive, nationalist and patriotic, defined the Democratic Revolution Party (PRD) its energy reform proposal presented today to transform national oil enterpirise Pemex, but without privatization. Engineer Cuauhtemoc Cardenas, founder of the party and son of former President Lazaro Cardenas, who expropriated the Mexican energy resources in 1938, presented on behalf of PRD Monday which promotes to change the energy regime without making any change in the Constitution.
It includes changes to 12 secondary laws among which reduce the tax to which it is subjected Pemex, described by Cuauhtemoc as confiscatory, economically irrational and financially unsustainable.
Cardenas said on the esplanade of the Monument to the Revolution, where the initiative was launched, that he was available full time to unleash a campaign to prevent the government and the Mexican rightwing to fufil its claims of privatization of hydrocarbons.
He appreciated the importance of promoting a referendum, given the case that the majority of the Congress approves, with the vote against from patriots, he said the reforms aimed by the Executive to change the Articles 27 and 28 of the Mexican Magna Carta.
In that case, he argued, would need a million 635 000 voters to query the first Sunday in July 2015 that he would call federal elections by that date the Chamber of Deputies.
Before he explained that PRD reforms have among their objective to prolong oil reserves; gradually decrease export of resources, development of productive chains, increase production capacity and refining, and build new facilities.
The proposals of PRD, he argued, seek grant budgetary autonomy and management of Pemex and CFE, and transform both public companies.
They are also designed to reduce him the tax burden to that entity; boost energy transition as well as giving a new destination to the resources of surplus oil for example to areas of priority such as education and health.
In the first part of his speech Cuauhtemoc Cardenas evaluated the reform initiative filed Monday by President Enrique Pena Nieto, which in his opinion threatens the sovereignty and independent development of the nation.
He noted that the official exchange search amend Articles 27 and 28 of the Constitution but also incomplete because nothing says nor secondary legislation provides specific elements that underpin how to achieve competitiveness for Pemex.
