Choose Well

Ecuador, one of whose presidential candidates has already been assassinated, can doubtless look forward to more of the same should it vote the wrong way in either Sunday's election or the simultaneous referendum on whether to stop oil drilling in an Amazon national park. Votes for erroneous candidates in Latin American elections have a long history of provoking unpleasant consequences; whether directly, as with the death-squad democracy of the 1980s, or indirectly, as with the economic warfare ("reform" in Newspeak) of the post-dictatorship era. A previous attempt to prevent drilling in the Ecuadorian rainforest was made a decade and a half ago, when President Rafael Correa offered to leave the oil in the ground in return for an internationally sponsored fund for half its estimated value. "Whether it was a gamble or a publicity stunt," proclaims Britain's leading liberal newspaper, "the bid failed to get the money;" since clearly the failure could never lie with those bastions of civilised values who did not care to pay.