The Congress in Ecuador are pulling out all stops to circumvent the proposed April 15th referendum. the referendum is to determine whether or not constituent assembly will go ahead.
They even fired the president of the Supreme court Jorge Acosta (I wonder if he is any relation to Alberto Acosta the mining minister)because he wasn't doing them any favours, the new Supreme court President has given them 3 days to make their case. They are claiming it is unconstitutional and they may be right but are running out of time.
What this means to ARU, PLE, CTQ, DMM and ACX IMHO is that uncertainty will plague these stocks while special interest groups make the news by banging the Nationalization drums. I know the Government has stated they do not intend to Nationalize anything but it may make the NA markets even more nervous when this type of chatter hits the street.
Polls suggest 70% of Ecuadorians are supporters of the referendum. Here is a snippet from ElUniverso:
March 06, 2007
QUITO | AFP
The Constitutional Court (TC) gave back to east Tuesday to the Congress the demand of illegality that presented/displayed against the call to popular consultation on a Constituent Assembly, adducing imprecisiones in the text, informed a source into the organism.
According to the civil employee, the coalition of right account with three working days to correct the complaint, in order that the qualification committee decides if it admits it or no.
Of not making the amendments within that term, the legislators will have to again fulfill the proceeding of presentation of the resource, explained the source.
The demand was been Monday by a legislative majority that fears the dissolution of the Parliament for the Component, whose installation will be defined in a plebiscito summoned by the Electoral Supreme Court (TSE) for the 15 of April.
In another maneuver to block referendo, this coalition dismissed east Tuesday to the president of TSE, Jorge Acosta.
Experts maintain that the TC (dominated by the opposition parties) will not have time to pronounce itself on the complaint, although the president of the organism, Santiago Vela'zquez, announced east Monday that of being admitted will occur a “proceeding him of exception” to fail it before the 15 of April.
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