Quito, March 16 1999

If Mahuad Does Not Respond, We Will Call For Him to Step Down

CONAIE and other social movements hope to receive from President Mahuad an immediate response to our demands, otherwise tomorrow at 11:00am, we will demand the revocation of his mandate since the President apparently has neither ears nor any words to respond to our call to reach a National Accord.

We will view as evidence of a shift in attitude and dialogue if the President takes the following steps:

  • Lifts the National State of Emergency
  • Retracts the economic measures announced on March 11, and withdraw of the package of legislative projects that are being urgently rushed through the National Congress.
  • Fosters a true tax reform (one that calls for those who have more to pay more), eliminating fiscal shields and loopholes and punishing tax evaders.
  • Demands the renegotiations of the Foreign Debt, beginning with the issue of debt-forgiveness.
  • Rejects the privatization of the strategic social areas (education, healthcare) and economic areas (oil, electricity, telecommunications, and water), but at the same time pursues the transparent processes of modernization.
  • Creates a Development Fund for Indigenous Nationalities.

While expressions of social discontent grow in various economic sectors in urban and rural settings, politicians negotiate behind the backs of the people and against their wishes. We firmly reject the authoritarian solutions that politicians are including in their anti-democratic scheming.

We condemn the opportunistic attitude of Jaime Nebot and the Social Christian Party, that after having provoked and taken advantage of the current crisis now presents itself as the savior and protagonist of the opposition.

The government, politicians, and economic elites must understand that the Indigenous Nationalities and other social movements will not allow them to fix their accounts and arrange the distribution of state powers. This is the moment in which the people are actively participating in advancing fundamental changes in the structure of the state and the model of neoliberal development.

Otherwise, they will continue again and again to impose the same economic prescriptions that are starving the country and have exhausted the patience of the people, while a small group of powerful families continue to augment their riches.

For the above reasons we demand that the National Congress:

  • Sanction currency speculators and return immediately all the national funds that have gone to save banking institutions.
  • Subject the Superintendent of Banks (put in place by the PSC and DP) to political and legal judgement for being one of those responsible for the financial crisis and currency speculation.

The politicians will be responsible for the exacerbating of social discontent if they do not accept democratic spaces in which solutions can be found, solutions that the nation urgently needs.

Antonio Vargas
President

 

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