November 26, 2017

Speaking at a press conference beside AP’s Executive Secretary Gabriela Rivadeneira and former Minister of Foreign Affairs Ricardo Patino, shortly after his return to Ecuador from Belgium, he said his aim is to help restore broad popular contact like at the start of the Citizens’ Revolution 10 years ago, which bolstered his presidency from 2007 to 2017.

Correa gave his first press conference since returning to Ecuador in the Pacific port city of Guayaquil. He described his return as a means to strengthen the AP as well as denounce “counterrevolution” elements operating within the leftist movement and political party.

There’s a “counterrevolution within our own bowels,” he said from the movement’s headquarters in Guayaquil, whose leadership is now under dispute with the current President Lenin Moreno.

“We will not allow traitors to take PAIS Alliance,” Correa said, adding, “From this crisis, we will return to the roots, to the streets, to the people. We will return to those convinced militants.”

The former head of state reiterated that he will be present at the VII PAIS Alliance Convention, which is scheduled to commence on Dec. 3 in the coastal city of Esmeraldas, where the movement’s leadership must be ratified.

Flanked at the press conference by a host of lawmakers, Correa stressed that the restructuring of the political group is vital. “Here is the true PAIS Alliance, always full of optimism, joy, conviction,” he said. “We do not want the Citizens’ Revolution to be part of the past, we are part of the future, we will continue to build this revolution for the common good, for justice.”

Correa’s return was caused by an open rupture with Moreno, whom he has repeatedly lambasted online as “disloyal and mediocre” as well as having backed policies of Ecuador’s right-wing opposition.

“This is not a fight among buddies, this is a profoundly ideological conflict,” he told Associated Press, going on to say that Moreno’s “betrayal has shown how weak the country still is and how easy they can take us back to the past.”

https://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/Ecuador-Correa-Announces-New-Era-of-Citizens-Revolution-20171126-0016.html

Source: teleSur