As Ecuadoreans go to the polls to elect a new president, the UK Guardian spells out the stakes as follows:

For Ecuador’s 15 million inhabitants, Sunday’s presidential election runoff will pose a fundamental question: whether to continue with a leftwing government that has reduced poverty but also brought environmental destruction and authoritarian censorship, or to take a chance on a pro-business banker who promises economic growth but is accused of siphoning money to offshore accounts.

Let’s start with the “environmental destruction” charge.

Thousands of indigenous villagers who have been fighting Texaco (and later Chevron after a 2001 merger) since 1993 over its destruction of their lands scored huge victories under Correa’s government. The opposition candidate, the banker Guillermo Lasso, was part of the government of Jamil Mahuad that in 1998 signed off on a fraudulent “cleanup” of the jungle where the corporation dumped billions of gallons of waste water.  

Texaco (and then Chevron) battled very hard in U.S. courts demanding that Ecuadorean courts settle the dispute. They did an about face after Rafael Correa took office in 2007. Under judicial reforms brought in by Correa’s government – approved by voters in a referendum – Chevron no longer had the corporate friendly judicial climate to which it had long grown accustomed. Ecuador’s Supreme Court upheld $9 billion in damages to the indigenous villagers (from the $200 billion a year company) but Chevron had already run back to US courts demanding protection from Ecuador’s reformed judiciary.  With a Lasso victory, multinationals like Chevron will be looking to sing the praises of Ecuador’s judiciary once more.

Steven Donziger, a lawyer who has been fighting on behalf of the villagers since the early 1990s told me “It is critical Ecuador’s government continue its posture of defending the independence of its own judiciary in the face of Chevron’s attacks on the resulting environmental judgment against it, which has been confirmed by Ecuador’s highest court.”

Moreover, as the Center for Economic and Policy research explained in an extensive review of Ecuador’s economy under Correa’s government “Ecuador’s growth during the decade was not a result of production of oil or minerals per se. Rather, the government’s increased capture of revenue from these activities, and spending it on public goods and services…”

What about the “authoritarian censorship” charge?

Recall that the British government forced the Guardian to destroy hard drives in a lame effort to squash its reporting of Edward Snowden’s leaks. The government also arrested and detained David Miranda based on an outrageous “anti-terrorism” rational for the same reason: an effort to stifle journalism.  Julian Assange has been stuck in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London for several years because Sweden and the UK have chosen to help the United States make an example of a publisher they don’t like.

Double standards aside, if you actually read or watch Ecuadorean media, rather than just hear about it from newspapers like the Guardian or large NGOs with extremely dubious claims to independence from the US government, you’ll quickly realize that Ecuador’s private media constantly attacks the Correa government and attempts to shield politicians like Lasso, who would not have a chance in today’s election without the private media’s help. For example, for several crucial days before the election, Ecuador’s private media maintained a very conspicuous silence about details that emerged about Lasso’s financial activities outside Ecuador.

Ecuador’s state owned media did report it, and that eventually forced a journalist in the private media to question Lasso about the revelations. In that interview Lasso repeatedly called Ecuador a “dictatorship”.  Elsewhere in the private media, Lasso has threatened, if he wins, to prosecute Correa:

He must face in the courts all the judicial processes that will necessarily be opened to audit these last 10 years of Government.

As is so often that case, western outlets like the Guardian cannot be relied on for something as simple as accurately reporting the content of newspapers or TV broadcasts in countries where leftwing governments are in power.

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