Ecuador Government and Politics
Priest playing a large panpipe (Jama-Coaque
culture)
ONE OF THE LEAST POLITICALLY stable of the South American republics
for most of its history, Ecuador had 86 governments and 17
constitutions in its first 159 years of independence. Only twenty
of those governments resulted from popular elections, and many of
the elections were fraudulent. José María Velasco Ibarra, who
completed only one of his five terms as president, often stated,
"Ecuador is a very difficult country to govern."
Ecuador had four successive democratic elections from 1948 to
1960, but the country did not experience relative political
stability under democratic rule again until the 1980s. Seven years
of military dictatorship ended with the presidential inauguration
of Jaime Roldós Aguilera on August 10, 1979. After Roldós died in
an airplane crash on May 24, 1981, Vice President Osvaldo Hurtado
Larrea assumed the presidency. The completion of the Hurtado/Roldós
administration and the constitutional and orderly transfer of
power--the first such transfer in twenty-four years--to
conservative León Febres Cordero Ribadeneyra (1984-88) in August
1984 seemed to affirm the restoration of democracy in Ecuador.
Nevertheless, as Roldós himself had cautioned shortly before taking
office, the nation had only a formalistic and ritualistic
democratic tradition.
Indeed, Ecuador has been shaken periodically since 1984 by
bitter conflicts between the executive branch on the one side and
the unicameral legislature and the judiciary on the other. These
clashes were particularly pronounced during Febres Cordero's
polemical administration. His authoritarian rule also provoked
military mutinies and even his brief abduction by rebellious
troops. Although battered, Ecuador's democratic system survived,
and Febres Cordero transferred power to his long-time rival,
Rodrigo Borja Cevallos, in August 1988. Whereas Febres Cordero, a
millionaire businessman from Guayaquil, had advocated a free-market
economy, strong executive control, and close alignment with the
United States, Borja, a social democrat from Quito, espoused a
mixed economy, a pluralist government, and a nonaligned foreign
policy. In his first two years, Borja succeeded in softening the
impact of his predecessor's legacy of political, economic, and
social crises.
Despite a decade of civilian democratic rule marked by three
peaceful transitions of government, analysts generally agreed that
the political system remained vulnerable. Political scientist John
D. Martz noted, for instance, that the transition to a third
democratic government in 1988 provided "little reason to believe
that the fragile democratic system in Ecuador had been
strengthened, nor that the historic pattern of instability had been
fundamentally reversed or modified."
The destabilizing conflicts among the executive, legislative,
and judicial branches of government resulted primarily from
idiosyncrasies of Ecuador's institutional structure. For example,
the judiciary, despite being independent, lacked the authority
needed to serve as an effective check on the abuse of presidential
powers. Although the Supreme Court of Justice (Corte Supremo de
Justicia--CSJ) carried out many judicial duties normally expected
of a nation's highest court, it did not rule on constitutional
issues. A nonjudicial appendage of the National Congress (Congreso
Nacional--hereafter, Congress), the Tribunal of Constitutional
Guarantees (Tribunal de Garantías Constitucionales--TGC), exercised
that function, thereby giving the legislative body the power to, in
effect, control interpretation of the Constitution.
The traditional, deep-seated division between the liberal,
trade-oriented, tropical Costa (coastal region) and the
conservative, agrarian-oriented Sierra (Andean highlands) also
helped explain Ecuador's bitter infighting over political and
economic affairs. This fundamental division pitted the Pacific port
city of Guayaquil, the country's principal economic center, against
the highland capital of Quito. The enmity between natives of
Guayaquil and of Quito was reflected in the alignment of the
country's sixteen registered political parties, in the 1988
elections, as well as in the refusal of outgoing President Febres
Cordero, a native of Guayaquil, to speak to his successor, Rodrigo
Borja, a native of Quito, or even to personally pass the
presidential sash to him on August 10, 1988. According to political
scientist and former president Hurtado, rivalry among provinces and
regions for central government attention in the form of development
projects, principally road construction, also was a major source of
political conflict.
Although Ecuador's political parties and its free and partisan
press participated in a lively and contentious democratic political
process, parties suffered from factionalism, weak organization,
lack of mass participation, and blurred ideologies, as well as from
the competing influences of populism and militarism. Analysts
generally agreed that the proliferation of small parties and the
need to negotiate alliances contributed significantly to political
instability in the 1980s.
Data as of 1989
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