Yesterday was an important day not only for the people of Ecuador, but most importanly for an ideology whose main goal is to give the people the direct control of their government by direct democratic means ( referendums), while at same time create a more egalitarian society and start the process started by Simon Bolivar: building a Latin American Union.
The people of Ecuador spoke clearly and massively with a blowout victory for President Rafael Correa Delgado, who won the presidency by a 52% to 28% margin against his closest rival, right-winger ultranationalist, and former President of Ecuador Lucio Gutierrez.
http://www.nytimes.com/...
This election was a direct mandate from the new Constitution drafted and approved last year massively by the Ecuadorian people. Hence, it made everyone in power face a new election under a more democratic system of rules and regulations. This new election in Ecuador, who by law can only last 2 months and is publicly financed, was an election were 8 different presidential candidates from political parties in Ecuador ran for the presidency.
Of those 8, Lucio Gutierrez was the biggest challenger. He is a former president, who was in power for 2 years until 2005 when he was taken out of power by a mass revolt of the people, because of his corruption scandals of naming family members to government positions and his neo-liberal policies of selling the Ecuadorian resources to the highest bidder, without redistributing this money back to the people who needed it most. Gutierrez decided to focus his campaign on name calling Correa a dictator, a communist, a fascist, or any other name to intimidate the populace into voting for him. Nonetheless, his fear mongering tactics failed miserably since President Correa has been an ardent defendant of democracy, to such extent that before he enacts radical changes in the agenda, he proposes a referendum, so it is the people directly who decide if they want to support Correa and his Alianza Pais political party or not. Evidently, if President Correa loses any of this referendums he would be technically done with his political career.
Nonetheless, President Correa has been victorious every single time, this was his 6th consecutive electoral victory and this is the first time in Ecuador's history where anyone wins the presidency in the first round of voting, instead of the second round.
For that reason, we should look to Latin America, specially Ecuador and learn from this strategies and their ideology and fight for a more democratic, egalitarian society where the people have the power to change government and be sucessful and not the powerful elites who normally rule this country.