Rafael Correa

Rafael Correa (born April 6, 1963, Guayaquil, Ecuador) is an economist and politician who was president of Ecuador (2007–17).

Early life and start in politics

Correa, whose maternal grandfather was a great-nephew of former president José Eloy Alfaro, had a difficult childhood. During a period of unemployment, his father agreed to carry illegal drugs aboard a flight to the United States and was arrested and served several years in jail. Correa attended the prestigious San José La Salle high school on a scholarship, and he spent a year as a church-sponsored volunteer with Quechua-speaking Indians in Cotopaxi province. He later received a master’s degree from the Catholic University of Louvain in Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium, and a doctorate from the University of Illinois; his thesis examined the effects of economic globalization on living standards in the less-developed world.

Correa served briefly as Ecuador’s finance minister in 2005. The following year he ran for president on a platform that called for constitutional reform. A skilled and charismatic political campaigner, he easily defeated Álvaro Noboa, a wealthy banana-plantation owner, in a runoff vote.

Presidency

After taking office in 2007, Correa increased agricultural subsidies and dramatically raised spending on social programs, most notably health care and education. His government also seized companies owned by members of a powerful family implicated in a banking scandal in the 1990s. Although his reformist agenda antagonized some business and media groups, it proved popular with many voters. In early 2008 he broke off diplomatic relations with Colombia after that country’s forces raided a guerrilla camp inside Ecuador. In September voters approved a referendum on a new constitution that increased presidential powers over economic and monetary policy.

Though commentators made much of his friendship and affinity with Venezuelan Pres. Hugo Chávez, Correa brushed the criticism aside, vowing to carry out an “economic revolution” putting Ecuadorans before debt payment and oil profits. “Markets should be subject to societies, not the other way around,” he said. In December 2008 he announced that Ecuador would default on a $30.6 million interest payment due on a foreign debt, calling it “immoral and illegitimate.” The news came amid a global financial crisis that contributed to decreased oil revenue in Ecuador. Despite concerns that the high cost of his social programs could seriously hamper the country’s economy, Correa remained hugely popular and easily won reelection as president in April 2009. (It was ruled that his time in office before the promulgation of the new constitution did not count as a term under that constitution.)

As the economic downturn that had begun for much of the world in 2008 persisted, Correa introduced austerity measures that proved unpopular with many Ecuadorans. Most notably, on September 30, 2010, elements of the military and national police staged protests in response to cuts to benefits for public servants. While addressing some of the protesting police, Correa was injured by tear gas, was taken to a hospital that was then surrounded by police, and had to be rescued by the military (whose leadership continued to support the president). With order restored, Correa contemplated evoking a statute of the new constitution that allowed him to dissolve the National Assembly and rule by decree until new presidential and legislative elections had been held.

In May 2011 Correa scored a major political victory when voters endorsed all 10 questions put forth in a national referendum, including approval for him to appoint a commission to overhaul the judicial system and to direct the National Assembly to form a commission (reporting to Correa) that would regulate media content. Correa’s older brother, Fabricio, an affluent businessman, characterized the measures as a power grab and an attempt to gag opponents.

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In August 2012 Correa courted controversy when he approved the granting of political asylum to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. An Australian national, Assange had taken up protected residence in the Ecuadoran embassy in London in June after having exhausted legal appeals to avoid extradition to Sweden on charges of sexual assault.

In February 2013 Correa demonstrated the staying power of his popularity when he was reelected president in a landslide. He captured nearly 58 percent of the popular vote, more than 30 percent more than his closest competitor in the eight-candidate field, thereby avoiding a runoff election; to do so, he needed to garner a simple majority or 40 percent of the vote plus a 10 percent margin over the runner-up. According to the new constitution, Correa would not be able to run for president again in 2017.

In February 2014 it was revealed that the Ecuadoran government had negotiated secretly for several years with Chinese state corporations to develop oil deposits in Yasuní National Park at the same time that Correa had been requesting that foreign donors contribute $3.6 billion to a fund in exchange for preventing oil drilling in the park. In May, after election officials rejected a petition for a national referendum on the matter (ruling that its supporters had failed to collect enough valid signatures), the drilling was approved. In October another potential referendum was ruled out when the Constitutional Court decided that a raft of proposed changes to the constitution—including the removal of term limits for all public executive positions, which would enable Correa to run for a fourth term—could not be put to the electorate through referendum and would have to be addressed in the National Assembly.

Correa’s conflict with the news media continued in 2014. His government fined the newspaper El Universo for having published a cartoon depicting a police raid on a journalist’s home. Moreover, another newspaper, Hoy, claimed that its decision to cease print publication and become an online-only operation was partly the result of government harassment.

By 2015 Correa’s personal popularity had begun to suffer, partly because his government had been forced to cut public spending in response to plummeting oil revenues. In the first half of the year, Ecuadorans repeatedly took to the streets to protest the government’s proposal to impose an inheritance tax of 77.5 percent (which was subsequently withdrawn) and what many Ecuadorans saw as the president’s dictatorial style. Nonetheless, in December 2015 the National Assembly—firmly controlled by Correa’s party—adopted 15 amendments to the constitution, including the removal of term limits, which was to be transitionally implemented by 2021. Correa announced that he would not run for president in 2017, but the constitutional change cleared the path for him to subsequently seek reelection indefinitely.

Correa’s dwindling popularity coincided with the misfortunes of several other leftist Latin American leaders who had come to power at roughly the same time. Term limits brought an end to the presidency of Cristina Fernández de Kirchner in Argentina; Nicolás Maduro, who had succeeded Venezuelan leader Hugo Chávez upon his death, was threatened by a recall effort; and Dilma Rousseff was impeached and removed from office as the president of Brazil in the wake of scandal. In the 2017 presidential election, Correa threw his support to Lenín Moreno, who had served as his vice president from 2007 to 2013. Although Moreno was the winner in the first round of voting, his percentage of the vote and margin of victory were not sufficient to prevent a runoff with the second-place finisher, Guillermo Lasso, a centre-right businessman who was poised to reverse many of Correa’s policies, including his protection of Assange.

Lasso accused Correa and Moreno of election fraud when Moreno was declared the winner of the runoff held in early April 2017. Moreno took some 51 percent of the vote to 49 percent for Lasso, but three exit polls had indicated that Lasso would be the winner, and he demanded a recount. Correa celebrated Moreno’s victory at his side by serenading supporters with political songs and declared that the exit polls had “lied.”

Soon after the election, however, Correa started butting heads with Moreno, who, rather than keeping the presidential seat warm for his predecessor, began to reverse some of his policies. In May Correa relocated to Belgium, his wife’s home country, and in late November 2017 he actively opposed a constitutional referendum forwarded by Moreno that would limit Ecuadoran presidents to two terms. On February 4, 2018, some two-thirds of Ecuadorans voted in favour of the referendum, thus blocking Correa from attempting to return to office in 2021.

Later in 2018 Correa refused a judge’s order that he return to Ecuador to face charges arising from the attempted kidnapping of an opponent in 2012. He was subsequently accused of participating in a bribery scheme involving government contracts, and in 2020 he was tried in absentia. Correa was found guilty and sentenced to eight years in prison. He denied all the charges against him.