Noboa wants to bring foreign military bases back to Ecuador

Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa announced Monday that he will send a bill to the National Assembly (parliament) to remove an article from the constitution that prohibits the establishment of foreign military bases and facilities for military purposes in the Andean country.

“In a transnational conflict (against organized crime) we need national and international responses,” said Noboa, who fights criminal gangs linked to drug trafficking.

The announcement was made in a video recorded at the former Manta base, on the central coast of Ecuador. A few years ago, a US base was established there, but it had to be vacated in 2009 after the constitution drawn up during the government of Rafael Correa (2007-2017) banned foreign military installations on national territory out of respect for sovereignty.

The project aims to lift the ban on the establishment of foreign military bases or facilities for military purposes, as well as the ban on the transfer of national military bases to foreign armed forces or security forces.

Sovereignty vs. Surrender

In the video, Noboa pointed out that by eliminating the Manta base, “they wanted to say that we would regain the sovereignty of Ecuador, and what they did was hand it over to drug trafficking. That was the first pact with transnational crime,” he stressed.

“And in this fight to recover the country, it is the pact that we must reverse and break. Today, Ecuadorians deserve a government that is equal to the events we are going through. They deserve a president who makes decisions with determination, because Ecuador did not lack opportunities, but honesty and political will,” he added.

He therefore announced that this Monday they will present to the National Assembly a draft for a partial reform of the Constitution, “which will significantly amend Article 5 of the Constitution, which prohibits the creation of foreign military bases and installations with military purposes.”

Without naming names, the head of state claimed that they are “rebuilding the country they brought to its knees, the country they turned into a cradle of drug trafficking, the country they handed over to the mafia with a false idea of ​​sovereignty.”

The president tried to point to the government of Rafael Correa to hold it responsible for the violence, but forgot to mention that this happened during the governments of Lenín Moreno, who betrayed the Citizens’ Revolution, and of Guillermo Lasso, of the far right, when criminality took over Ecuador and also took over much of the Andean country’s political system.