Correa Boycots OAS Summit, Stays in Ecuador on Serious Business

Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa

*NOTE BY LIZZIEPHELAN.BLOGSPOT.COM: Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega also boycotted the OAS summit

SOURCE

Can you remember the last Summit of the Americas? Do you know that there have been five others? I don’t expect you can, unless you were among the participants, and even then, there’s some doubt. This is a summit where nothing much is ever resolved, since the U.S. and Canada dictate all policy.

Had Cuba been included, some serious issues might have been discussed, like the Cuban 5, the embargo, or Luis Posada Carilles, for example, but Cuba has been omitted from all such summits.

The most exciting things to have happened to that sorry summit have been the recent creation of CELAC and expansion of ALBA. The Organization of American States (OAS) is quickly becoming obsolete, as it should — being a quaint, old colonial tool.

Several members of ALBA had vowed to boycott the summit to protest Cuba’s exclusion.  In the end, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez’s excused himself for medical reasons, Bolivian President Evo Morales showed up to register a protest, and Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa followed through with the boycott. One suspects Morales is the unhappier one of the three. Here is what was accomplished in Ecuador.

Dady Chery, Editor
Haiti Chery

Ecuador fulfills popular mandate to transform justice

By Staff (sc/cmf/rmh)
Prensa Latina

Quito, Ecuador, Apr 15 — Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa said that after 12 years of trial and five governments, the National Court of Justice pronounced sentence against the brothers Roberto Dassum Isaiah and William Isaiah in the Filanbanco case of the millionaires’ theft of citizen’s deposits.

A recent report by Cutuglagua parish, in south Quito, asserted that this sentence is possible thanks to the fulfillment of the popular mandate in the electoral process held last May.

Justice is nobody’s property but seeks for a clear, transparent, efficient, honest and patriotic administration, and after 12 years we have a conviction because the offense was clear: the theft to the deposits of the Ecuadorians, he stated.

The Isaiah brothers, former shareholders and directors of Filanbanco were condemned last Tuesday to eight years of imprisonment for the crime of embezzlement, but both are living in the United States since they abandoned the country after leaving thousands of depositors in bankruptcy.*

Correa called on citizens who still keep accounts at that financial institution, closed during the 1999 bank theft, to withdraw the bank accounts because the State has placed funds and assets to pay them the money back.

In this regard Pedro Delgado, president of the Central Bank said that this institution has the list of the creditors of the closed banks and invites all interested persons to collect their deposits by buying the assets of the closed banks.

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*According to the Ecuador Times, the sentences are 12 years in prison for William Isaiah and 3 years for Robero Dassum Isaiah. This judgment came after 13 years of trial and 54 different judges.

Sources: Prensa Latina | Ecuador Times

Correa confirms he will not attend Summit of the Americas

By Staff (sc/jg/hmr/rc)
Prensa Latina

Quito, Ecuador, April 3 — Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa said that as long as he is the head of State, Ecuador will not attend any “Summit of the Americas” until the decisions required by the Americas are made.

In a letter, released by official media, to Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos, Correa said that he values and appreciates the gentle and repeated invitation to attend the 6th Summit of the Americas in Cartagena de Indias on April 14 and 15.

He added that unfortunately, although at the 5th Summit of the Americas held in Trinidad and Tobago from April 17 to 19, 2009, Cuba’s incomprehensible exclusion from the summits of the Americas was rejected, once again, this twin country has not been invited.

Correa said that it is

“unacceptable that these summits avoid such fundamental issues as the inhumane blockade against Cuba, and the aberrant colonization of the Falkland (Malvinas) Islands, which are almost unanimously rejected by the nations of the world.”

Regarding the Summit of the Americas, he said that by definition, the summit cannot bear its name when an American country is intentionally and unjustifiably neglected.

People have talked about a “lack of consensus,” but we all know that this is the veto by dominant nations, which is an intolerable situation in our 21st-century Americas, he said.

“We don´t mean to cause problems to our beloved Colombia nor to its government. As Bolivar used to say, it is about truly feeling that the homeland is the Americas, and at some point beginning to denounce and face these intolerable and even aberrant situations.”

“Our peoples may get tired of their leaders attending so many summits, while there are still so many issues to overcome, such as poverty and inequality, parameters that place Latin America as the world’s most unequal region,” he said.

Correa criticized the ineffective strategy to combat the world drug problem and highlighted the profound transformation required by the Inter-American Human Rights System, which currently guards interests that are alien to its founding principles.

He highlighted the validity of true freedom of expression that is not reduced to the interests of businesses engaged in social communication, or the complete supremacy of capital over human beings, as evidenced by the mortgage crisis in Spain.

Correa said he hopes that the absence of Ecuador is a cordial invitation to discuss the essential and to act accordingly, confirming his esteem and respect for all his colleagues, heads of State of the continent.