Se sabe que los líderes de regímenes populistas se caracterizan, entre otras cosas, por una marcada tendencia al exceso de protagonismo de sus líderes. Tal parece ser el caso del ecuatoriano Correa, quien ha tomado al caso Assange más allá de sus límites para usarlo en su promoción personal.
Ecuador Takes the Stage With Asylum Offer
President Correa Casts Himself as Media Advocate After Giving Refuge to WikiLeaks Chief, but Critics Say He Curbs Press
Every day that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange remains holed up in Ecuador's
embassy in London provides an opportunity for Ecuador's populist President
Rafael Correa to command the world stage, trumpeting his anti-American views to
growing applause at home.Since granting Mr. Assange asylum last week, the mercurial South American leader has used the case to cast himself as a statesman and defender of press freedom, which many analysts and critics say contrasts with his own record of harassing Ecuador's media.
On Friday in Washington, the Organization of American States is scheduled to take up Ecuador's complaint against Britain—over objections from the U.S.—for allegedly threatening to storm Ecuador's embassy in London to arrest Mr. Assange. British officials say they can legally revoke diplomatic immunity for an embassy if it isn't being used for proper diplomatic functions.
Mr. Correa has already mobilized support for his position. Last week, foreign ministers of the Union of South American Nations, an intergovernmental union, defended the asylum move.
"The whole Assange thing is about Correa's ego and his place in history," said Riordan Roett, director of Latin American studies at Johns Hopkins University. "With some people, this makes him look as if he's a major international player, a global figure, which he is not."
Mr. Correa's office couldn't be reached to comment.
In a news conference Wednesday, Mr. Correa said: "He [Mr. Assange] is being persecuted for his convictions, while progressive governments, which are trying to put an end to the worst injustices in the planet, are victims of calumnies, disinformation, persecution in particular by the dictatorships that exist in the continent, among them the [dictatorship of] the media."
The Australian founder of WikiLeaks sought refuge at the Ecuadorean embassy in London in June, hoping to avoid extradition from the U.K. to Sweden, where he is wanted for questioning on charges he raped one woman and molested another in 2010. He denies the allegations, and he hasn't been charged with wrongdoing.
Mr. Assange asserts that Sweden's extradition bid is part of a U.S. plot to haul him before a U.S. court to face charges related to the publication of secret U.S. government documents. The U.S. has denied any role in the Swedish prosecution and American officials say investigators have struggled to make a case against Mr. Assange.
The brouhaha over Mr. Assange plays to Mr. Correa's strengths. The flamboyant populist has made such confrontation—at home and abroad—a political trademark.
In 2010, Ecuadorean police went on strike over pay and other issues, blocking roads and seizing the airport. Mr. Correa went to debate them, but instead of calming the situation, he got angry, bared his chest and dared the police to kill him "if you have the guts." The police responded by seizing the president and placing him in a police hospital. Tensions escalated until the army freed Mr. Correa. Eight people were killed in the unrest.
Mr. Correa turned the incident to his advantage, saying the country had narrowly averted a coup, and drew broad international support, including from Washington. His poll ratings climbed.
Born to a struggling working-class family, Mr. Correa is seen as having a love-hate relationship with the U.S. When he was a young man, his father was arrested in the U.S. for smuggling drugs and sentenced to prison. The elder Correa later killed himself.
Despite the setback, Mr. Correa went on to earn a doctorate in economics from the University of Illinois, where he spent some of his best years, he said in a 2010 speech at the university. In that speech, Mr. Correa praised the U.S. as a place where when mistakes are made, steps are taken to correct them. But he added, in Latin America, if a mistake is made "we go throw stones at the U.S. embassy."
As president, Mr. Correa has followed the steps of Venezuela's authoritarian populist Hugo Chávez to redraw his country's constitution to permit consecutive presidential terms. He has joined Mr. Chávez's Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America, and developed close ties to Iran.
Mr. Correa, who faces re-election next year, is riding high in the polls in the face of a fractured opposition. Appealing to the nationalist instinct of his followers plays well in Ecuador. Many Ecuadorians bear a grudge against the U.S. for acting as the main guarantor of a 1942 treaty which granted a large slice of disputed Ecuadoran territory to Peru.
Mr. Correa's irascible streak runs to international affairs, too. Last year, he expelled U.S. ambassador Heather Hodges after the publication of a WikiLeaks memo which said Mr. Correa had promoted a corrupt police official. Two years earlier, Mr. Correa expelled another U.S. diplomat for writing what he called an "insolent" letter saying the U.S. would no longer fund a special police unit. "We won't accept anybody treating us as a colony," Mr. Correa said then.
In 2007, he declared the local World Bank representative persona non grata in a dispute over loan conditions. Last year, he walked out of a presentation by the World Bank at a summit meeting in Paraguay charging that the bank had withheld a credit from Ecuador for political reasons.
Some say the British government erred when it informed Ecuador that U.K. officials could enter the Ecuadorian embassy to arrest Mr. Assange.
"It was irresistible for Correa. No one relishes confrontation more than him," said Michael Shifter, president of the Inter-American Dialogue in Washington.
Mr. Correa has adeptly played a type of "Judo diplomacy," turning an opponent's strength against him, said a diplomat with a deep knowledge of the country. "He's put the Brits in the defensive, characterizing them as implementing gunboat diplomacy."
While Mr. Correa is casting himself as a defender of free speech, analysts say he has a long record of repressing media.
Mr. Correa's government has shut down 11 radio broadcasters since May, most of which had been critical of the government, said Carlos Lauria, senior program Americas coordinator, senior program Americas coordinator at the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists. Regulators didn't follow due process in closing the stations, Mr. Lauria said. "Correa is someone who doesn't tolerate any kind of dissent," he said. "It's ironic the government has decided to grant asylum to Assange when the press is under siege in Ecuador."
Earlier this year, an Ecuadorean court sentenced three owners of Ecuador's most important newspaper, El Universo, to three years in jail after the newspaper was found guilty of libel for publishing a column critical of the president. In an ironic twist, Carlos Pérez, one of the newspaper's owners, took refuge at Panama's embassy in Quito for two weeks during the incident—much like Mr. Assange has taken refuge.
After international outrage, Mr. Correa pardoned the newspaper owners, but Mr. Lauria says the chilling message was clear: The media had better watch its step.
Mr. Pérez says Mr. Correa and Mr. Assange have little in common. "Assange is a hacker who thinks that governments should make information transparent, while Correa thinks the government shouldn't give out any information at all," he said.
—Nicholas Casey in Mexico City and Julian E. Barnes in Washington contributed to this article.
A version of this article appeared August 24, 2012, on
page A8 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline:
Ecuador Takes the Stage With Asylum Offer.
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