Ecuador plunges into chaosProtestors block traffic after savings accounts frozenREUTERS QUITO, Ecuador, March 16 Commuters walked to work in the rain on Tuesday as transport workers joined a taxi drivers' strike, blocking most urban routes and plunging the small Andean nation deeper into chaos. Angry at steep fuel price increases decreed by a government desperate to save Ecuador from its worst financial crisis in decades, strikers stationed trucks and bright yellow taxis across highways to jam roads into cities.
The mayhem on Tuesday underscored that March has been a month to forget for Ecuador's population of 12 million.
LONG-SUFFERING Ecuadorians, two-thirds of whom live in poverty, defied protesters' barriers with typical determination.
Hunched under umbrellas, most trudged to work on busy sidewalks, while others pedaled bicycles past the protesters. Some car owners, their vehicles jammed with passengers, made their way to work along snaking, improvised routes on and off the highways.
“My feet are sore but I'm not going to let them stop me getting to the office. The country is in crisis and the only way to get out of the mess is by working — not by creating more chaos,” said a red-faced Maria Helena Perez, 58, tramping 5 miles to the court where she is a clerk.
The mayhem on Tuesday underscored that March has been a month to forget for Ecuador's population of 12 million.
A crisis in investor confidence over the government's withering finances drove the currency to a record low, sparked a run on deposits and provoked the increasingly unpopular President Jamil Mahuad to shut ailing banks for nine days.
Ecuador also endured a violent two-day general strike, a national state of emergency that put thousands of troops on the streets and a new, harsh economic program that hit the worst-off hardest.
FROZEN ASSETS
Banks reopened on Monday but the government froze roughly half of people's savings to stave off a collapse in the financial system.
And life could get worse before getting better.
Powerful labor unions threatened on Tuesday to step up their protests by staging nationwide strikes against Mahuad's handling of the crisis.
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Vowing to crush the government's economic measures, the opposition-dominated Congress appeared set to clash head-on with a president whose popularity rating has slumped to a record low 16 percent.
The rejection of a Mahuad tax measure by Congress earlier this month triggered the confidence crisis that led the country into chaos.
International Monetary Fund Managing Director Michel Camdessus has called the crisis a “historic and dramatic moment” and Ecuador's ambassador to Washington Ivone A-Baki said the nation's 20-year-old democracy was in jeopardy.
Two years ago the legislature ousted president Abdala Bucaram amid similar economic turmoil and street protests.
The ouster of the “Madman,” as Bucaram dubbed himself, ushered in a volatile political period that has seen four presidents in the past three years.
BAD TO WORSE
Since Bucaram's ouster in 1997, Ecuador's $20 billion economy has plunged from bad to worse. Fluctuating prices for oil and bananas, two of the country's key exports, have helped to erode conditions. El Nino-driven floods added to the country's financial woes, causing $2.6 billion in damage.
Inflation, already Latin America's highest, is expected to rise again this year and the economy is headed for a deep recession as the government needs to slash spending to shore up a $1.2 billion budget shortfall.
In a message broadcast on local television on Monday, Camdessus said Ecuador must rally around a consensus program to overcome what the government has said is the worst financial crisis in 50 years.
Jaime Nebot, head of the Social Christian opposition party, has sometimes provided key support to Mahuad's government in Congress. But in a nationally televised address he offered little hope of an early rapprochement between legislators and the government.
“The president has finally taken a path,” Nebot said. “Unfortunately it leads to Ecuador's destruction.”
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