The reelected president of Ecuador, Rafael Correa, said the “big loser” of the election was the country’s private press when asked how it would figure in to his new mandate, said the newspaper El Universo. Correa said he would continue with the Communications Law because what the people want “is an honest and responsible press. Never with censorship, but with ulterior responsibility.”
The president also said his questioning of private media “is not affected by an electoral win or loss,” said the newspaper El Tiempo. “Ecuador and Latin America have the worst press. They are used to doing whatever they feel like, and that has to end. We need to create a society where the citizens are in charge, not someone who had enough money to by a printing press,” said Correa.
Correa had said he would maintain his tense relationship with the press if he was reelected. In an interview, he said he would keep confronting and defending himself from “a manipulating press.”
Correa was reelected with 57% of the vote, against 24% for his closest rival, Guillermo Lasso, said the National Electoral Council (CNE in Spanish). Correa came to power in 2007 and this new four-year mandate of “more revolution” will make a decade in power, said El Mundo.
Note from the editor: This story was originally published by the Knight Center’s blog Journalism in the Americas, the predecessor of LatAm Journalism Review.
