New socialist leader pledges to ‘rebuild’ Ecuador’s leftist movement

Newly elected president of Ecuador’s Socialist Party, Enrique Ayala Mora, says Ecuador’s political left must be rebuilt from the ground up. “We have suffered considerable losses in recent years and it is time to restore the legitimacy of the socialist struggle in this country,” he said in a Monday interview following his weekend election.

Enrique Ayala Mora

A former member of the National Assembly, college history professor and life-long leftist, Ayala broke with other members of the Socialist Party in opposing the government of former president Rafael Correa.

“We need a complete break with the recent past in order to reestablish credibility with our constituents,” Ayala says. “The former and current governments have broken trust with the indigenous, the campesinos and environmentalists, pillars of the leftist movement,” he added, referring to Correa’s and Moreno’s support for mining and oil operations. As he has before, Ayala repeated his claim that Correa’s government, in its final years, became a “self-serving authoritarian ego cult that abandoned its early principals.”

Ayala’s harshest criticism is aimed at Moreno who he accuses of “selling off” Ecuador’s sovereignty to make a deal with the International Monetary Fund. “He has become a lackey for the big money interests and seems willing to sell the country’s soul to the highest bidder,” he says. Ayala also warns of proposed changes to the country’s labor laws, currently pending the National Assembly, claiming they will take away rights of workers “earned over generations of struggle.”