A different kind of election

With campaigning for the US Presidential election in sickeningly full swing, I´d like to draw some attention to another election that occured last week here in Ecuador.

Ecuador, a country the size of Nevada and only thirty-six years younger than the United States, is about to rewrite - for the nineteenth time - its constitution. That may sound a little strange to most of us, who are used to having the Constitution placed somewhere just below the Bible and Shakespeare. Ecuador, however, goes through constitutions almost as fast as it goes through Presidents (six in the last ten years).

Because I know Ecuadorian presidential politics may not be everyone´s favorite dish, I´ll sum up: The new Ecuadorian president, strongly reminiscent of one infamous Louisiana governer, called a snap referendum to write a new constitution. The referendum pass widely in a country fed up with a corrupt and self-serving Congress. Last week, again by a wide margin, President Correa´s troops won a majority of the seats in the new Constitutional Assembly. That assembly will rewrite Ecuador´s constitution over the next six months - and has the power to disband Congress and/or vacate the presidency if it sees fit.

A lot more interesting than which Repuclian candidates in the US are most monogamous, don´t you think?

For a more informed article about Ecuador´s recent election, see this Economist article.