Correa says he won’t move back to Ecuador for several years due to family commitments

Former President Rafael Correa said on Friday that it will be several years before he can consider moving back to Ecuador from his wife’s native Belgium, where the family relocated in July after the end of his mandate.

Rafael Correa with Lenin Moreno during 2017 presidential campaign.

Correa, 54, was in Ecuador to take part in Sunday’s convention of the party he founded, Alianza Pais (Country Alliance), currently torn by a conflict between his followers and those of his successor as president, Lenin Moreno.

The convention was a  point of contention between the two factions and on Thursday the national elections council said it was an “illegal meeting.”

“For very profound family reasons, I cannot return to Ecuador to live in the next few years,” he told a press conference in the capital, adding that he is scheduled to fly back to Belgium on Monday.

He said that after 10 years as president, he left office in May with a plan to retire from politics, but found himself compelled to respond to “treachery” on the part of Moreno.

The two men fell out early in the new administration and relations grew even worse after Moreno complained of inheriting a critical economic situation from his predecessor.

Allies of Correa, who holds the title of life president of the center-left Alianza Pais, recently tried to oust Moreno from the party chairmanship, but a court intervened to block the move.

“We are fighting against a monster with a thousand heads,” Correa said Thursday. “We were deceived, we were swindled.”

He will preside over the party convention set to begin Sunday in the northwestern province of Esmeraldas, which was called by leaders of the Correa faction, including former Foreign Minister Ricardo Patiño and one-time congressional speaker Gabriela Rivadeneira.

A week ago, Moreno carried out a purge of the party’s national directorate, removing Rivadeneira and Patiño from senior posts.

Moreno’s policies as president are “destroying” the party’s political project, known as the Citizens’ Revolution, Correa said.

Correa said that if the Moreno faction takes control of the party, he would to leave Alianza Pais “because I won’t be an accomplice to this.”

During his decade in office, the US-trained economist presided over a reduction in poverty and a general improvement in living standards for the majority of Ecuadorians.

He survived a police mutiny that his government characterized as an attempted coup and twice won re-election.
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Credit:Latin America Herald Tribunne, www.laht.com