Correa warns of the privatization of public services if Lasso wins election

President Rafael Correa warned Saturday that the election of Guillermo Lasso and a “conservative restoration” would mean the privatization of a wide range of public services and elimination of services for the poor.

Rafael Correa at Saturday’s Citizens Link.

“It’s frightening to think we could return to the failed experiments of the past and to the neoliberalism of the 1990s,” he said during his Saturday “Citizens’ Link” television broadcast from El Oro Province. “Once again, we could have no free education and medical care for the poor. Once again, we would have charity for the rich.”

According to Correa, Lasso advocates dismantling Ecuador’s Social Security health care system and cutting funding for public education.

“We have worked hard to establish a society that provides high quality services for all of our citizens, not just the wealthy,” Correa said. “We wrote a new constitution in 2008 to guarantee rights that had long been ignored and now the opposition says they want a new constitution that would return us to the past.”

Lasso has said that he will call for a constituent assembly to make constitutional changes if he is elected.

In pushing Alianza País candidate Lenin Moreno, Correa warned of the “conservative chaos” in Argentina and Brazil. “The teachers are on strike in Argentina and the children are out of class and (President Michael) Temer has submitted a law to the Brazilian assembly that mandates no new social welfare investments for 20 years. Is this what we want for Ecuador?”