La revolución está en marcha

I know…I start of every blog apologizing for the lack of recent posts. This time I blame TVCable, the local internet provider. We signed a contract with them a month ago and they are just now getting around to installing our system. Apparently they provided fairly good service until last year when the government nationalized the company because its owners weren’t paying taxes, and now their offices are as bad as any other Latin America (or D.C.) bureaucracy. I guess you take the good with the bad in Ecuadorian “21st Century Socialism.”

Speaking of 21st Century Socialism, we had general elections here in Ecuador this past weekend. It was a lot more tranquilo than the ones held in Guatemala while we were in the Peace Corps, when the U.S. Embassy was concerned that one of the candidates, an ex-president/notorious war criminal would take the office by force should he not be elected. (Peace Corps made us stay in our sites in groups on “lock down”…we had a 3-day home-made hot-tub party. No coup ensued. But I digress.)

Here the voting is mandatory (you get a fine if you don’t vote), and for the first time ever, 16-year old kids, prisoners who have yet to be sentenced, non-citizens with 5 years of residence, Ecuadorians living abroad, and active duty military were able to vote. Although President Correa was basically a shoe-in for the highest office, this was still a big election because the Constitution made almost the entire government provisional, so most offices in the country were up for grabs. Nonetheless, other than a few burnt ballot boxes, some angry rhetoric, and tons of fireworks, everything went pretty smoothly during election day.

Counting the ballots is another story. Monique has explained the system they use to count votes at least three times to me, and I still don’t understand it. It’s some complex formula by which they count votes for individual candidates and then count votes for entire tickets, discounting the weight for tickets with more candidates. I don’t feel so bad though, because the people in charge of counting the ballots also didn’t understand the system, and it looks like 30% of the votes will have to be recounted. Oh well. It’s clear we’ve got at least four more years of Correa, which I’m sure will make things exciting for us as he continues his populist “Citizenship Revolution.” And it was enough of a draw to bring Jimmy Carter down to check out the situation. Monique got to sit really close to him at a talk on Wednesday.

Our house is slowly shaping up, although our stuff is still not here (supposedly coming next week). But I’ve got a hammock, a terrace, a little grill, and a newly purchased hand-crank meat grinder for making burgers and (guinea pig??) sausages, so I’m pretty much satisfied with life. For anyone near the D.C. area, Monique and I will be back in town for my law school graduation the weekend of May 17. Hope to see you all there or here.

-D&M