(Sacrilege! Of course this guy is nowhere near as cute as El Ecuadorable, and certainly nowhere near as nice. But he fits in with the general theme, so chill.)
Is Rafecito playing Soup Nazi now, or is there more to this than initially meets the eye? A little something from Aporrea, translated by Your Humble And Obedient:
The president of Ecuador, Rafael Correa, ratified on Saturday that he would not re-establish relations with Colombia, as long as “there is no decent government to work with.”
The declarations came one day after his Colombian counterpart, Alvaro Uribe, expressed interest in repairing ties broken since March, due to the violation of Ecuadorian sovereignty on the part of Bogota.
“We ratify: Those diplomatic relations with Colombia will not be re-established as long as there is no decent government to deal with,” Correa affirmed.
Without alluding to the conciliatory words of his Colombian counterpart, Correa asserted that “personally, I have no problem extending my hand to Uribe,” but when confronted with the disregard demonstrated by the Colombian government towards Ecuador, he prefers to leave that relationship on ice.
“I represent a country which has been attacked, a country whose sovereignty has been trampled, which has been disrespected constantly, disregarded by a government which doesn’t understand what loyalty is, or international rights, or good neighborliness, peace, justice or dignity,” Correa said.
Ouch.
Of course, he’s correct on all points. Ecuador WAS attacked in the bombing raid of March 1; that attack WAS a violation of sovereignty, since it came without so much as a “By the way, you have a FARC camp on your soil, may we raid it?”; the Colombian government, especially the defence ministry, has indeed been a disrespectful bunch of shits; there are good reasons, some of them iterated by Correa himself, to question Uribe’s judgment (and his sanity!); and of course, just to completely kong you over the head with the obvious, Colombia has indeed been a lousy neighbor to Ecuador and Venezuela both, utterly disrespectful to human rights within and outside its borders, and guilty of murder on an international scale (Mexican university students, anyone?)
But of course, the lamestream media, once it catches wind of this, will make Correa out to be the shit, and Ecuador the bad guy. They’re all googy-gaggy over how Chavecito has “humbled” himself (ha! not even hardly), and as I’ve already pointed out, that’s far from being the case. If anything, it’s been his way of showing who’s the better man. (Don’t forget that Venezuela’s sovereignty has also been trampled; his invitation, therefore, has a sharp little hidden point in it: Colombia, stay off our turf unless we ask you to come.)
So don’t be surprised if, in the next few days, you see a rash of “Oh, that rude Rafael Correa” stories. Personally, I don’t think it can get much ruder than for Colombia to bomb another country in the dead of night, but of course that’s just me.
