http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-09-30/ecuador-coup-attempt-cited-by-correa-after-scuffling-with-police-at-rally.html
Ecuador President Rafael Correa said police and soldiers protesting a plan to trim their salaries were part of an attempted coup d’état after they assaulted him during a demonstration in Quito.
“We’re faced with a permanent conspiracy,” Correa, 47, said in a telephone interview with Radio Publica after protesters hurled water at him and surrounded the presidential palace, burning tires and clashing with security forces. “The opposition are behind this attempted coup d’état.”
Correa said police pointed guns at him as he tried to dissuade the officers from protesting at the Mariscal Sucre police base, and that he was injured in the scuffle and “practically kidnapped.”
The demonstrators shut down the international airport and looters ransacked banks, supermarkets and shopping malls in the port city of Guayaquil amid a lack of security, CRE Radio reported.
“Here I am. If they want to kill me, go ahead,” Correa said as he was being heckled by protesters. “I won’t back down.”
Ecuadorean police and soldiers are objecting to a measure passed by congress last night that would delay automatic promotions and slow salary increases. Correa defended his policies, telling Radio Publica in an interview that salaries had doubled since he came to office in 2007.
Military Patrols
Gen. Luis Ernesto Gonzalez, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the armed forces may patrol the streets to “guarantee external and internal security.”
All flights into Quito have been canceled after about 300 members of the armed forces stormed the airport and blocked the airstrip, Luis Galarraga, a spokesman for Quiport, the company that operates the airport, said today in a telephone interview. The protestors remained inside the airport as of 1:55 p.m. New York time and the airport will remain closed until they leave, he said.
PetroEcuador, the South American country’s state-owned oil company and biggest source of export revenue, said operations were normal as the military guarded refineries and oil fields.
Phone calls into the country weren’t connecting as of 1 p.m. New York time.
‘Deeply Worried’
“We’re faced with a process of destabilization of the national government and democracy in Ecuador,” Interior Minister Miguel Carvajal said, according to the EFE news service.
Argentina’s Foreign Ministry issued a statement saying the government was “deeply worried’ about the protests in Ecuador and had confidence in Correa.
The extra yield investors demand to hold Ecuadorean dollar bonds instead of U.S. Treasuries narrowed six basis points, or 0.06 percentage point, to 10.36 percent at 1:36 p.m. New York time, according to JPMorgan’s EMBI+ index. Ecuador’s so-called spread has widened 23 basis points this quarter, while the index has narrowed 58 basis points.
