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Ecuador - Lucio Gutierrez victory opens a new revolutionary stage By Julian Costas The final results of the Ecuadorian elections have meant the victory of the left-supported candidate Lucio Gutierrez. Abstention which reached 33% in the first round, went down to 28.8% in the second round, in which Gutierrez received 55.5% of the votes. His opponent, the right wing billionaire and banana magnate Alvaro Noboa, the richest man in the country, has been defeated despite having spent massive amounts of money in his campaign. Noboa stood on his own, outside of the traditional bourgeois parties, and tried to offer an image of being "against the system" and used all sorts of demagogic promises trying to fool the country's poor. He combined this with strident denunciations of Gutierrez as a Communist and a coup organiser, with the aim of winning the support of the most backwards and reactionary layers of society. Despite all he only got 45.5%. This result is a further indication of the shift to the left and the recovery of the popular movement that we are witnessing in the whole of Latin America. As was the case with Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, Gutierrez has come to power pushed by the most oppressed and exploited sections of society in Ecuador, that are in this way trying to change their situation, having already tried in several occasions through mass mobilisations in the last few years. The new government will, from the very beginning, be subjected to the pressure of the masses on the one hand, demanding that it solves the pressing problems of poverty and social injustice the country is faced with, and on the other hand, to the pressure of imperialism (through the IMF, the US government and the Organisation of American States) and of the Ecuadorian ruling class. These are already taking positions in Parliament, the state apparatus and even within government in order to push him in the opposite direction and ensure the maintenance of the current policies which have forced 60% of the population into poverty and a large section of the people to emigrate. It is completely impossible to conciliate these two sets of opposite interests and this will necessarily lead to a new heightening of the class struggle. Who is Lucio Gutierrez? Contrary to what the media constantly repeat, Lucio Gutierrez is not a "coup organiser Army officer". He is a former colonel who, during the January 21 revolution in 2000, under pressure from the mass movement, entered into conflict with the then president, the right wing Jamil Mahuad. Instead of obeying his orders of charging against peasants and workers who were filling the streets of Quito, he joined the revolutionary forces together with some of his fellow officers and many of the rank and file soldiers. After the revolution was de-railed popular pressure forced his release. He resigned from the Army and following Chavez's steps he founded a political party, together with the officers who participated in the revolution with him, so that he could stand in the elections, under the name of Patriotic Society January 21.
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