Global Research

President Lenin Moreno betrayed ordinary Ecuadorians by abandoning his pledge to continue progressive policies of his predecessor Rafeal Correa.

Instead he instituted force-fed austerity, enforced with police state harshness, and sold Julian Assange to the US and UK for a loan shark of last resort $4.2 billion IMF loan — requiring corporate-friendly policies at the expense of beneficial social justice continuity, abandoned by his regime.

Days of police state violence against legitimate protesters from early October through Sunday left at least 10 dead, around 2,000 injured, and over 1,000 arrested — ignited by a Moreno decree to end longstanding fuel subsidies, doubling prices overnight in deference to an IMF diktat.

Following weekend talks with indigenous and other protest leaders, he cancelled his unacceptable order, saying:

“With this agreement, the mobilizations…across Ecuador are terminated, and we commit ourselves to restoring peace in the country.”

It all depends on fulfilling his campaign pledges, requiring much more than reinstating fuel subsidies.

As long as neoliberal harshness continues, mass outrage could erupt again any time ahead.

Moreno surrendered to IMF financial terrorism. It obligates borrower nations to sell their soul for blood money.

It assures debt bondage, requiring new loans to service old ones, structural adjustment harshness against millions most vulnerable, and policies favoring Western and internal monied interests at the expense of governance for everyone equitably.

Nations in bed with the predatory IMF are required to let bankers and other dominant corporate interests strip mine their material wealth and resources, tolerate no democratic values, abandon social justice, and exploit working class people as serfs.

An elite few benefit at the expense of most others, entrapped nations controlled by Western monied interests, their sovereign independence lost to a higher power.

IMF diktats mandate no public sphere, unrestrained corporate empowerment, elimination of social spending, and earmarking state resources for predatory profit-making, national security and internal control.

It’s war by other means on ordinary people in affected countries, transformed into dystopian backwaters, Western and internal privileged interests benefitting from exploitive harshness.

IMF debt bondage assures mass unemployment, underemployment, and impoverishment, loss of essential to life social services, and economic decline.

Years after agreeing to onerous terms for IMF loans, borrower nations are worse off, deeper in debt, their ordinary people paying the biggest price.

Yet Article I of the IMF Articles of Agreement states the following:

Its loans to nations are intended to “facilitate the expansion and balanced growth of international trade, and to contribute thereby to the promotion and maintenance of high levels of employment and real income and to the development of the productive resources of all members as primary objectives of economic policy.”

There’s more, claiming IMF policies are to “give confidence to members by making the general resources of the Fund temporarily available to them under adequate safeguards, thus providing them with opportunity to correct maladjustments in their balance of payments without resorting to measures destructive of national or international prosperity.”

Claiming loans aim to “promot(e) and maint(ain) high levels of employment and real income and to the development of the productive resources of all members as primary objectives of economic policy” is mass deception.

So is saying “(i)n difficult economic times, (the IMF) helps countries…protect the most vulnerable in a crisis.”

Its agenda is polar opposite, force-feeding deprivation on vulnerable millions so privileged interests can benefit from their immiseration.

It works the same way everywhere under IMF mandates, including mass impoverishment, public wealth transferred to private hands, out-of-control corruption and cronyism, and nations transformed into dystopian shells to benefit monied interests exclusively.

What’s ahead for Ecuador after Moreno reinstated fuel subsidies remains to be seen.

He capitulated to Western interests. Ordinary Ecuadorians want him replaced by equitable rule — not likely coming while he’s in office.

As long as neoliberal harshness continues, mass outrage could erupt again any time.

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Award-winning author Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at [email protected]. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG)

His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.