From: nyt@nyxfer.UUCP
Newsgroups: soc.culture.latin-america
Subject: Ecuador Newsbriefs 1/20 ed-lp
Date: 21 Jan 93 04:49:00 GMT
Nf-ID: #N:D0LPXB14w165w@nyxfer.uucp:-2133940073:000:3980
Nf-From: nyxfer.uucp!nyt    Jan 20 20:49:00 1993


Subject: Ecuador Newsbriefs 1/20 ed-lp
From: nyxfer!nyt (NY Transfer News)


Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit

From el diario/La Prensa

Translated and edited by Toby Mailman. "el Diario/La Prensa" is 
a Spanish language newspaper published in New York City.


Gandara Forms Opposition Party in Ecuador

The former director and founder of the governing Republican 
Unity Party (UR), Mauricio Gandara, announced on January 17 the 
formation of a Movement for the Defense of the National 
Interests, and said it will take a position of frank opposition 
to the Ecuadoran government. According to Gandara the national 
government, during its five months in power, has shown that 
although it lacks a definite political plan, it has, on the other
hand, specific economic objectives of interest to both foreign 
and national private sectors.

Gandara was dismissed from the national directorship of the 
UR in the middle of the presidential campaign, when he tried to 
place the interests of his brand-new organization above those of 
the renewed Conservative Party (PC). The UR was formed to push 
the candidacy of the current president, Sixto Duran Ballen, and 
allied itself with the PC, of which Vice President Alberto Dahik 
is a member.

"We can confirm that the government has economic objectives 
of interest to national and foreign private sectors and it's easy
to demonstrate: they are trying to completely pay off the foreign
debt without taking into consideration the suffering of the 
majority of Ecuadorans," stated Gandara. He claimed that the 
privatization process which the administration announced under 
the pretext of achieving efficiency in the public sector is 
really a way to sell state enterprises to a small group of 
businesspeople, so that all the economic power of the nation will
be concentrated in their hands. It is for that reason, and no 
other, that members of this group of businesspeople form a part 
of the government, he asserted.

The leader bitterly criticized the exit from Ecuador of the 
OPEP [sic; OPEC? - Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries?] 
which he claimed took place so that nothing could stand in its 
way, thus submitting Ecuador definitely to foreign capital. 
Gandara thought that the exit of OPEP, an organization which 
seeks to protect the price of this raw material [oil] which 
finances nearly half of the Ecuadoran national budget, "has 
caused us international shame." he said. (edlp 01/18/93 from AFP)


Ecuadoran President Asks Doctors to End Strike

Sixto Duran-Ballen, president of Ecuador, rejected on 
January 18 the possibility of spending outside the budget in 
order to end the doctors' strike by putting into effect a law 
which would allow for increased salaries. He denounced the 
Constitutional Court for supposedly being biased in favor of the 
strikers. The National Doctors Federation which has 25,000 
members began a strike on January 4, lead by 4,500 state-employed
doctors, demanding the regulation of the law. Carlos Cardenas, a 
member of the union's directorate, told AFP that they decided to 
continue the strike indefinitely and threatened to broaden the 
protest until the government expedites the regulation. He said 
the doctors are willing to accept any form of salary increase 
which the regulation might stipulate, including that the 
government would owe it to them. "I am not going to allow the 
management of this matter outside the budget," said President 
Duran-Ballen, sticking to a strict economic discipline which he 
began last September with the aim of lowering the impact of 
inflation. (edlp 01/19/93 from AFP)


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