05-11-2014: Latin American Weekly Report

Indefinite presidential re-election has never existed in Ecuador. That is about to change. After four months of deliberations Ecuador ’s constitutional court (CC) has unanimously ruled that the unicameral national assembly can amend the constitution to allow indefinite presidential re-election, along with 15 other reforms, without the need for a national referendum to be staged. The ruling Alianza País (AP) has 100 of the 137 seats in the assembly, comfortably more than the two-thirds majority of 92 needed to approve the reforms. President Rafael Correa downplayed the significance of the CC ruling, arguing that indefinite re-election equated to “democracy without limits”. The political opposition argued that it would be a shat- tering blow to democracy, and decried the ruling as confirmation that Ecuador’s institutions were an appendage of the Correa administration.