Ecuador assembly backs draft charter

MONTECRISTI, Ecuador (AP) -- A special assembly on Thursday approved a new draft constitution granting Ecuador's leftist president broad powers, including the ability to dissolve Congress and set monetary policy, and freeing him to run for office through 2017.

The constituent assembly, elected to write a new constitution, backed the 444-article proposal by a vote of 94 to 32 in a late night ballot whose outcome had been expected.

President Rafael Correa's Alianza Pais party controls more than 60 percent of the assembly. The draft charter will now be submitted to a national referendum set for September 28.

The new constitution would help wrest power from Ecuador's widely discredited traditional political parties and more equitably distribute wealth across the country, said Correa, a U.S.-trained economist who made such revisions a central part of his 2006 presidential campaign platform.

But his detractors say the charter would concentrate excessive power in Correa's hands, amounting to a virtual coronation of the self-avowed Christian socialist leader.

Annabella Azin, an assembly member with the opposition PRIAN party, said the constitution's "objective" is to keep Correa in power.

The charter would allow Correa to "control every part of our lives," Azin said.

But supporters waved Ecuadoran flags after the vote and shouted: "We don't want ... to be a North American colony."

The effort follows others by Correa's socialist allies Hugo Chavez in Venezuela and Evo Morales in Bolivia in seeking a constitutional rewrite that would let him extend his years in power. Specifically the new charter would enable Correa to run for two new consecutive four-year terms.

It does not specify when a new Congress would be elected, although a vote is expected early next year. The old Congress was dissolved and provisionally replaced by the constituent assembly.

The new charter would let Correa dissolve Congress within the first three years of a new four-year term, though he would have to call elections for his own post at the same time.

The document also would assign to the president tasks currently performed by the independent Central Bank, prompting concern that Correa could politicize what has been a watchdog institution tasked with ensuring economic stability.

Though Ecuador's economy is dollar-based, the Central Bank sets interest rates and controls how many U.S. dollars are injected into the economy.

The assembly also voted to make the Indian languages Quichua and Shuar official languages alongside Spanish.

"We want a president of a democratic republic, not a monarch in power," former President Lucio Gutierrez told The Associated Press before the vote.

The document's less radical brand of socialism -- when compared to those of Morales and Chavez -- and Correa's popularity could boost its chances of voter approval in the referendum.

But Correa may need to tread carefully. Many investors were spooked by his move to increase government control of windfall oil profits from 50 percent to 99 percent last year. Ecuador is South America's fifth-largest oil producer.

Also discouraging foreign direct investment, which fell 34 percent in 2007 according to the Central Bank, was the government's suspension this year of all new mining concessions, which practically paralyzed Ecuador's nascent mining industry.

Although the economy grew by less than 3 percent last year, Correa insisted government intervention in the economy is necessary to close a wide income gap in this Andean nation of 14 million.

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