Ecuador’s Political Choice

As usual, the politics is Ecuador is pretty robust. The first election shows a complete changing of the guard. The conservatives that currently hold power were blown out of the election. The two main candidates to come out of the field of thirteen hopefuls are as opposite as possible.

Of course, one will win. But I expect either way Ecuador will lose.

Dale Correa is a Socialist/Leftist and economist. Curiously, while he is an economist by trade and educated in the United States, he is caustically anti-Bush, anti-American Imperialism and a solid admirer of Cuba and Venezuela. He advocates defaulting on the massive Ecuador debt, nationalizing much of the petroleum industry, and using the money on massive spending programs.

He was the Finance Minister of the current Palacio Administration (one of five in 18 months). He was fired from his job after the International Monetary Fund turned down a loan to Ecuador, which cited Ecuador’s overwhelming current debt and inability to control spending. Correa went into a much publicized tirade against the IMF.

Correa says that Ecuador should pay “no more than 3% for its bonds,” while it is currently paying about 12.5%. Of course the reason Ecuador pays so much interest is that Ecuador defaulted on its bonds in 1999 and has shown nothing to control the populist spending of its populations. Correa the economist must know this. But Correa the politician won’t hear of it.

When Correa came in a disappointing second in the initial election he charged vote fraud and demanded an investigation. When the official counts confirmed the original count, and the observers from the Organization of American Nations sanctioned the count as accurate, Correa went into a wild frenzy and demanded the OAN replace the senior official of the observation group for being part of the fraud.

To a Western outsider, Correa comes off as an erratic little kid playing grownup games.

On the other side is Alfredo Noboa, the richest man in Ecuador, having earned billions in the banana business. He has been stumping Ecuador with a Bible under his arm, giving out bicycles and wheelchairs, and pledging his personal fortune to help the struggling poor of Ecuador. It is a populist assault of making promises of better programs and economy and lives to all.

In reality, Noboa is part of the corrupt elite of the country. They are most interested in keeping the people happy, while in the meantime making sure that the laws, banks, police, courts and political institutions stay firmly in their hands. Theirs is a world where too much bureaucracy and Byzantian laws keep the lower classes where they are, while those of the right money, family or connections can operate without hindrance.

So, in reality, Ecuador has a choice between doing it the old way under a rich and corrupt man, or going with a young radical who’s politics has no grounding in reality.

Which is sad, because Ecuador has serious problems, economic and domestic. Staying the way it has, under Noboa, will mean a continued slide into economic chaos. Going with the unrealistic and erratic Correa will mean an astonishing destruction of the few parts of the economy still keeping Ecuador afloat.

Internet in Ecuador

Wow. Internet connections are fun in Ecuador. I don’t have Internet service at my home. It is extremely expensive, unreliable and the standard systems are dial-up, which are very slow. Also the standard in-home systems are rife with all kinds of worms and virus and bugs. Dangerous, very dangerous.

In fact, most of the time I go either to a couple of places around town that offer WiFi, where it’s free, or go to an Internet café that uses T1 lines. It’s faster, safer, and cheaper.

Well, my next door neighbor decided to give the in-house service a try. This involves buying a pre-paid Internet service card. You connect your computer to a phone line, dial up and you can use the Internet while there is a balance on your pre-paid card.

There are problems with this. For one, there are access charges on phone calls in Ecuador, and the phone bills can really escalate the cost of your Internet use.

Anyway, she’s having problems connecting. No phone connection, but the phone is working. As an experiment, I bring my laptop over to her place, plug it in, and successfully connect. So I know the problem is in her modem set up. I disconnect, and as I do so…

I notice my Firewall and virus shield are turned off.

Oh no. How’d that happen?

Well, first I find the problem with her modem and get her going. I go home and check my computer. My McAfee Virus Scan shows me 148 files are infected with a worm.

And this is a nasty little worm. It doesn’t do a lot of damage, but like all of it’s kind it just keeps replicating itself. The problem with worms is that sometimes while you do a scan it will jump from an infected area into a “cleaned” area. It can take four or five scans to truly eradicate the little beastie. In this case it took me five full, high powered scans with the latest McAfee software, spread over four days, to finally kill the little bastid.

All for just helping a neighbor.

Oh, and by the way, she connected up an older laptop without any security programs in place. Within two hours of being connected her computer crashed. A technician she called said it was infected so badly with so many viruses that the only real solution is to wipe the hard drive clean and reinstall all the operating systems from scratch.

Ouch.

Careful what you plug into.

Difficulty in Ecuador

Things are beginning to get difficult. I’m still muddling through the book rewrite, due 1 November. I’ll get it done but it has been a unique struggle. I’ve also been working on giving English Classes that I was supposed to be working with another person, a lady who has been teaching English here in Guayaquil. I thought teaching one or two English classes to Ecuadorians here might be a nice change of pace.

So I’ve worked on getting things set up. My schedule is tough right now, so the general idea was that she would teach the first class we got off the ground, and I would substitute in when needed. I’d pick up any later classes we had when my schedule eased a bit.

So we have a class with some teenagers I worked on getting started. These are some bright young kids who are going to the US or Canada next year on an exchange program and need some conversational English to get them ready for living 6-12 months there. It starts Monday.

Except now the other lady doesn’t want to do it. She has decided she doesn’t want to do a conversational class. She wants a class where she has a book, and a white board and teach grammar and give tests…

So now I have to teach the course. And while I’m excited to be able to spend some time teaching Ecuadorians some English, I’m appalled. I’m appalled because my writing schedule is still heavy. I’m also appalled that someone would so flippantly change their mind after I’d done so much work to get things set up.

Ecuador Election Mayhem

Here in Ecuador we are in the final stretch of the Primary Election. Shall we say that Ecuador’s electoral process is… robust?

Sunday is the actual vote. The candidates for the thirteen or so political parties have been busily promising mountains of government spending and vast reaches of windfalls to anyone and everyone who will listen. Of course, there is absolutely no mention as to how anyone will pay for these millions of largesse.

Talking to my English students, we discussed the differences in Ecuador and USA elections. I noted that candidates in the US could never do what Ecuadorian politicians do here. They could never call another candidate a fascist, or a communist, or a whore. The US candidate would be ostracized and their election hopes crushed.

Also, when US candidates talk of offering new programs, they are pretty much forced by the other candidates and the media to explain how they’ll pay for their new programs. What will new taxes be like? If the proposed spending and funding doesn’t make sense, the politician will be ridiculed and could never win.

The Ecuadorians were puzzled by this. How is it possible you must require politicians to defend the realism of their campaign promises? In Ecuador, it is important that politicians promise lots of spending to mollify the special interest groups, especially the poor. No politician says how they would finance such spending.

I said that Western politicians are expected to do this by the voters and the media. If the politicians don’t explain how they’ll pay for something, they just aren’t taken seriously.

A completely new and radical concept for Ecuadorian politics. It’ll never happen here.

The election takes on many unique turns due to the interesting Ecuadorian election laws. First, no opinion polls are allowed to be disseminated within twenty days of the election. People do them, of course, they are just not allowed to publish them in Ecuador. So they are published outside the country and filter into the country via the Internet and word-of-mouth.

Then there can be no active electioneering within 72 hours of the election. So Thursday is the big blow out day. All day Thursday, vast caravans of political supporters in cars and rented buses parade up and down the streets, beating drums and honking horns, waving flags and signs extolling the virtues of their candidates. Their ranks are swelled with “volunteers.” They have been promised jobs if the candidate wins. Of course, there are always more volunteers than available jobs… but what does that matter?

So all the way to midnight these vast parades of thousands intertwine throughout the city. Sometimes they meet. When they meet fights break out. And with the cacophony of blasting fireworks, honking horns, shouts and screams, the demons of Ecuadorian politics is played out.

Then from Friday to Saturday it is peace. By law no alcohol may be sold from Friday until the close of elections, so that everyone can be sober and thoughtful to do their civic duty. Sunday are the elections. Now, the elections are also covered by some interesting rules. In Ecuador, every citizen is REQUIRED to vote. This is tied to some hefty fines if a citizen does not vote. Voting in Ecuador is not considered a right, it is a responsibility.

Also, since there are so many presidential candidates the electioning gets complicated too. If the winner of the election gets more than 50% of the vote, they win outright and become President. Also, if they get 40% of the vote and they are ahead of their closest rival by at least 10%, then they win (Our hero gets 41% and the next candidate gets less than 31%).

Otherwise, there is a runoff in November with the top two candidates.

In two days, we’ll see what holds for the future of Ecuador.

The Gig on YOU TUBE

Well, my original short script, The Gig is now on You Tube. This is a neat site where independent filmmakers can post their work.

Rich Poche was looking for a short script, kind of an intellectual horror thing, to be done out of a photographer’s studio. I wrote it, he loved it. But, like many things in the filmmaking business “Stuff happened.” It ended up being down out of a hotel room! So a lot of the stuff for the photography studio was changed to make it more generic. A pity, really, because I think there was a lot of cool stuff lost in the transition. Still, I think Rich did a nice little effort.

It’s being put up to compete in some horror short contests. If you want to see the finished short, and give some feedback, click here.

Communicating with a client

Back to the grind. The book rewrite is turning out to be a much bigger undertaking than I originally thought. So this weekend I contacted my client to tell them it was going to take longer. They understood, and we set a new deadline that will give me plenty of time to finish it off and not feel I have to rush anything.

That is an important lesson for any new, professional writer. I know many writers who, if they run into unexpected obstacles, don’t say anything. They end up going over their deadline or turn something in that is missing key elements. Big no-no, in my opinion.

Clients for the most part will understand if you communicate with them promptly. If you let them know ahead of time then they have time to adjust their efforts and their commitments. They appreciate it. What they don’t appreciate is a writer missing a deadline, then offering up lame excuses why they didn’t finish the project on time.

Of course, one key thing I always try to do is build in more than enough time to finish a project. But of course, stuff happens. In this case the project was a bit more complicated than I first realized. I also overestimated how much writing I’d be able to do while on my trip to Southern California. The best intentions and all, but when meetings go long and evenings go longer the best intentions are often foiled.

So in my case, the project turned out to be more complicated and the ten-day head start I thought I’d get fizzled. When I got back and realized that was the case I quickly contacted my client. I explained the situation and requested and extension. They replied that they are more concerned with a quality work than a hard deadline, and gave me an extension a MONTH later than I’d requested.

Now that’s a client easy to work for!

Remember that, when you’re writing and the clock is ticking…

Southern California Goodbye - Hello Ecuador

Well, the week is done and I’m winging my way back home. The time in LA and Palm Springs was productive, although at times incredibly frustrating. In my home in Ecuador, anything I need is within a couple of miles, and normally within a few blocks. In the States, though, everything is over vast distances with lots of driving.

There are some great ideas popping around, with lots of potential projects in the works. In fact, I had a great meeting with a couple ladies who produce audio books. It seems they have some books that they need summarized and put into transcript form, so they can be produced in an abridged form of the originals. These are very smart women with lots of great ideas. I do hope something comes of it.

Well, I’m conserving battery power now. I’ll add more details in the coming days.
Have a great weekend!

Finally in LA

Well, I'm finally in Los Angeles. What a trip.

The Continental flight was great. In fact, the new Guayaquil International lobby is very nice. The new Olmedo Passenger Terminal is well done, attractive and very comfortable. It will be an istallation Guayaquil and Ecuador can be proud of.

Anyway, It was one of the newer, more comfortable planes, a Boeng 767. Plus it was only about 1/4 full, so I had all three seats in my row to myself. I did my normal - can't-sleep-on-the-plane so I was getting pretty dozy when we landed about 9:30. But the customs and stuff went very smooth, since there weren't any lines to speak of at this time of the morning.

I hustled over to my gate for my LA connection and got there in lots of time. but I found the Lima-Houston flight, which was the originating flight for my LA leg, was late. No worry about too short of a layover today.

The flight finally came in and we loaded up. Then the fun began.

After we settled and were ready, I noticed we were sitting, waiting to go, but nothing was happening. Several times they announced "We can't leave until all passengers are seated with their safety belts fastened and all seats and tray-tables in their upright and locked position."

After the fourth time, you'd think we'd understand that.

Then they announced we needed to get our personal belongings and leave the plane! It seems that when the tug attached itself to our plane to push it back the tow bar broke and they were afraid that there might have been some damage to the landing gear. They weren't sure, but to be sure and to follow FAA guidelines they needed the passengers off the plane so they could run the checks.

Well, after about 90 minutes we were back on the plane and winging our way West. It was like the earlier flight. It was sparsely passengered and again I had a row of three seats all to myself. I finally managed an hour's sleep, laying across the three seats.

It was after one when I emerged from the airport, with only 1 hour of sleep in the last 20, so I was really happy nothing was scheduled for Sunday. So I checked into a hotel near the airport, the Rennaissance which is one of my favorites. I hit Burger King and went to my room and turned on football. I fell asleep almost immediately and didn't wake up until the room alarm went off at 5:00 AM.

I'm still a bit punch-drunk but I feel much better. I'm going to take my time this morning, get cleaned up, have some coffee and breakfast before I head to get my meetings and errands done.

May all your writing be bought!