Yearbook 2009
Ecuador. As expected, President Rafael Correa won the first round on April 26, already in the first round, even though the victory margin was smaller than the opinion polls pointed out. Correa received about 52 percent of the votes cast, while his closest competitor, former president Lucio Gutiérrez, received 28 percent and received the most votes in five of the country’s 23 provinces. Thus, while Correa was given a stronger mandate than any president in Ecuador during the past seven politically turbulent years, analysts pointed out that support for Correa’s political projects appears to have dropped from the 64 percent who voted for a constitutional reform in the September 2008 referendum. See ABBREVIATIONFINDER for abbreviation EC which stands for the nation of Ecuador.
On the 200th anniversary of the proclamation of the country’s independence in 1809, Correa was sworn in for a second term, and he did not fail to address the date. Independence will not be complete, he said, until all the old colonial structures through his “citizen revolution” disappeared.
| Land area | 283,561 km² |
| Total population | 16,904,867 |
| Population density (per km²） | 59.6 |
| Capital | Quito |
| Official language | Spanish |
| Income per capita | $ 11,500 |
| Currency | U.S. dollar |
| ISO 3166 code | EC |
| Internet TLD | .ec |
| License plate | EC |
| Telephone code | +593 |
| Time zone UTC | – 5th |
| Geographic coordinates | 2 00 S, 77 30 W. |
In the congressional elections, which were held at the same time, however, the opposition parties also strongly disagreed. Government coalition Allianza País (AP), with its 59 seats, did not succeed in gaining its own majority, but will have to negotiate with individual small parties to get through legislative proposals. The largest opposition party was the presidential candidate Gutiérrez Partido Sociedad Patriótica (PSP) with 19 seats. On the other hand, the AP was given the chairmanship of the congress. Noteworthy was that it took the national electoral authority not less than two months to publish the official election results.
According to countryaah, the presidential election took place within the framework of the new constitution approved in the referendum in September 2008. Already in January, a fifth power function – in addition to the executive, legislative, judicial and election monitoring – that is laid down in the new constitution to operate, the so-called Council for citizen participation and social control. It is envisaged that the Council will appoint the members of the committees which then appoint the Prosecutor General, the Auditor General, etc.