Ecuador Party Politics in the 1980s
President Borja
Courtesy Embassy of Ecuador, Washington
Ecuadorian politics in the 1980s constituted an increasingly
bitter struggle among conservative, center-left, and far-left
parties and their leaders. Political scientist Catherine M.
Conaghan, commenting on the declining standards of Ecuadorian
political discourse in the late 1980s, noted that "in the absence
of strong institutions and new ideas, Ecuadorian politics has
devolved into a highly personalized and often trivialized arena of
intra-elite struggle."
Party competition in the 1980s was mainly between the PSC
(Christian Social Party) and the ID (Democratic Left). Many blamed
the heightened interparty friction on Febres
Cordero, the PSC leader who won the presidency by polling 52.2
percent in the second round of voting in May 1984. Febres Cordero
narrowly defeated Borja, who polled 47.8 percent as the ID
candidate. Febres Cordero's conservative National Reconstruction
Front (Frente de Reconstrución Nacional--FRN) coalition consisted
of seven parties, including the traditional PC and PLR. The FRN
held only twenty-nine of the seventy-one seats in Congress,
however, and the opposition effectively controlled the remaining
forty-two. The resulting political infighting threatened the
stability of the country's fragile democracy on several occasions.
Febres Cordero promised an honest public administration and a
revival of market principles in managing the economy. Nevertheless,
his government suffered from a succession of political and economic
crises. Ruling more in the style of a caudillo than an elected
politician, Febres Cordero used his executive powers boldly,
creating a number of constitutional conflicts with the other two
branches of government. For example, in late 1985 he promulgated a
controversial bill changing the electoral law and postponing the
legislative elections scheduled for early 1986. The proposed
reform, which was defeated in the plebiscite held on June 1, 1986,
would not only have given the executive extraordinary economic
powers, but would also have limited the right of habeas corpus, set
a four-year term for all members of Congress, and allowed
independents to be elected. Febres Cordero's authoritarian rule and
strongly pro-United States policies were blamed for his
government's major political defeat in the mid-term congressional
elections by allied center-left and Marxist parties, which captured
forty-three of the legislature's seventy-one seats.
Certain high-ranking military officials posed a challenge to
Febres Cordero in 1986. He dismissed the armed forces chief of
staff, Air Force Lieutenant General Frank Vargas Pazzos, for
accusing the minister of national defense and an army commander of
corruption. Vargas subsequently staged a week-long double revolt--
first at the Eloy Alfaro Air Base in Manta on the Pacific Coast and
then at Quito's Marshal Sucre International Airport--and demanded
the resignations of the two military leaders. A bloody battle in
March ended the second revolt and resulted in Vargas's arrest.
Although Congress granted Vargas amnesty that October, a decision
upheld by the TGC, Febres Cordero refused to honor the decision,
sparking a constitutional controversy.
During a presidential visit to the Taura Air Base outside
Guayaquil in January 1987, paratroop commandos loyal to Vargas
abducted Febres Cordero and his defense minister. They were
released eleven hours later after Febres Cordero personally granted
amnesty to Vargas and signed a written guarantee that no reprisals
would be taken against either the rebellious former general or his
commandos. A few days later, however, the army arrested the ninety-
four paratroopers, who were then expelled from the air force. A
military tribunal sentenced fifty-eight of them to prison sentences
ranging from six months to sixteen years.
Rather than rallying around the president following the near
overthrow of the democratic system, the leftist-dominated Congress
called a special session to consider impeaching Febres Cordero for
allowing himself to be kidnapped and then negotiating his release
by freeing Vargas. Although the opposition was unable to obtain the
two-thirds majority needed to impeach the president, it approved a
nonbinding demand that Febres Cordero resign for "disgracing" the
national honor.
Running as both a Socialist and a populist, Vargas participated
in the first round of the 1988 presidential elections as the
representative of the People's Patriotic Union (Unión del Pueblo
Patriótico--UPP). To the surprise of many, Vargas placed fourth by
garnering over 12 percent of the vote. In that election, Vargas's
UPP also allied itself with the PSE (Ecuadorian Socialist Party),
the Ecuadorian Revolutionary Popular Alliance (Alianza Popular
Revolucionaria Ecuatoriana--APRE), and FADI (Broad Left Front).
Also running as a center-left candidate was Jamil Mahuad Witt,
a DP protégé of former president Osvaldo Hurtado. Mahuad won 11.5
percent of the vote. On the far left, Jaime Hurtado ran as the
candidate of the Maoist-oriented Democratic Popular Movement
(Movimiento Popular Democrático--MPD), with the backing of the
FADI, but collected only 5 percent of the vote, behind the CFP's
Angel Duarte, with nearly 8 percent.
Another contender was PRE leader Abdalá Bucaram Ortiz, who
returned from Panama, where he had fled in 1985 after criticizing
the armed forces, to participate in the first round of the
presidential elections. Febres Cordero allowed the flamboyant,
mercurial Bucaram to return in the belief that his candidacy would
help weaken the center-left and unite the right. The 18.4 percent
of the vote Bucaram garnered shocked all the candidates and their
parties, especially those on the disunited right, whose prime
contender, the PSC's Sixto Durán Ballén, placed third with not
quite 15 percent of the vote. A high voter turnout (nearly 78
percent) throughout the country and particularly in Guayaquil
contributed to Bucaram's impressive showing. He suddenly became a
major challenger by edging out Durán and placing second to Rodrigo
Borja who, as expected, was in first place, with 24.5 percent.
Accordingly, the second round of the presidential elections in
May 1988 was a contest between Borja and Bucaram. Despite their
lack of substantive policy differences--both favored economic
nationalism and import substitution--their campaigns were
characterized by hard-hitting personal attacks that, Conaghan
notes, "brought the level of political discourse to a new low."
Borja won, as expected, with 1.7 million ballots, or 47.4 percent
of the vote. Bucaram, with the aid of the Lebanese community in
Guayaquil, polled 40.3 percent, totaling about 1.45 million votes.
(Of the approximately 3.8 million ballots cast, 425,000 were null
and 45,000 blank.) This was a much better showing than expected,
especially considering the failure of his PRE to win the support of
any of the other major registered parties. Bucaram subsequently
fled the country again to avoid an arrest order issued by the
president of Guayaquil's Superior Court for alleged malfeasance
when he was mayor of Guayaquil in 1985. Nevertheless, according to
Conaghan, the electoral results legitimized Bucaram as a national
leader and assured him a future role as a presidential contender.
Although Borja lost in the five coastal provinces, he carried
the fourteen provinces of the Sierra and Oriente (eastern region),
as well as the Galápagos Islands. (Sucumbíos, the twenty-first
province, was not created until 1989.) He also made an important
showing in Guayas Province and adjacent Los Ríos Province, winning
about 33 percent of the vote. Borja's ID became the majority party
by winning twenty-nine of the seventy-one seats in Congress and
entering into a coalition with the Popular Democratic Union (Unión
Democrática Popular--UDP) and DP (Popular Democracy), with seven
seats, and FADI, with two seats. FADI was joined by the Movement
for the Unity of the Left (Movimiento para la Unidad de la
Izquierda--MUI) and the Revolutionary Movement of the Christian
Left (Movimiento Revolucionario de la Izquierda Cristiana--MRIC).
Borja also had the support of the FRA (Alfarist Radical Front), the
Maoist MPD, and CFP (Concentration of Popular Forces).
Borja took office in August 1988 promising to reverse
completely the policy course of Febres Cordero. He called for a
"pluralist cabinet" and a "government of consensus," meaning a
national understanding (concertación) among workers,
employers, and the government. His cabinet included seven ID
members, four independents, and one DP member, as well as the two
secretaries general, who belonged to the ID. Borja, a former
professor of constitutional law at the Central University, made
respect for legal guarantees a central theme in the selection of
his ministers. His government energetically investigated alleged
civil abuses perpetrated by Febres Cordero's government and secured
several convictions.
The Borja government also took a new direction by making moves
to appease opposition elements within military and guerrilla ranks.
In November 1988, with the approval of the CSJ and several other
institutions, including the military, Borja pardoned the air force
paratroopers who had kidnaped Febres Cordero and had become, in
jail, heroes among left-wing and populist parties. In early 1989,
the Borja government negotiated an agreement with the Eloy Alfaro
Popular Armed Forces (Fuerzas Armadas Populares Eloy Alfaro--FAP-
EL), popularly known as the Alfaro Lives, Damnit! (¡Alfaro Vive,
Carajo!--AVC), a guerrilla/terrorist group founded in 1982
(see Internal Security
, ch. 5). Borja also pardoned a number of
imprisoned former air force members
(see Political Forces and Interest Groups
, this ch.). In mid-1989 his legislative coalition
with Hurtado's Christian Democratic party ended by mutual accord:
Hurtado had opposed it from the start, and Borja no longer needed
the agreement with the Christian Democrats, having won the support
of other small parties.
Data as of 1989
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