Rafael Correa

On 22 March 21 alternate deputies were sworn in, allowing the Congress to regain quorum, and on 23 and 24 March a further 20 deputies were sworn in. The new majority (formed by 28 alternate deputies and 31 deputies from parties that support the referendum and Assembly) pledged to support the referendum on the Constitutional Assembly. On 23 April, the Constitutional Tribunal decided to try to reinstate 51 of the 57 Congressmen who had been fired by the Electoral Tribunal. The Constitutional Tribunal claimed that it was illegal to remove them in the first place, and approved a petition by the 51 requesting their reinstatement. But before the congressmen had the chance to reenter Congress, Congress voted to fire all nine judges of the Constitutional Tribunal for their "unconstitutional actions".

On 15 April, Ecuadorians voted overwhelmingly (81.72% in favor) to support the election of a constituent assembly.

On 30 September 2007, due to the extraordinarly large number of candidates and lists (26 national lists, 428 provincial lists, 44 emigrant lists) the Ecuadorian Constituent Assembly election, 2007 was the most complex in Ecuador's history. As a result in the national election, President Correa won backing for his plans to rewrite Ecuador's constitution and expand state control of the nation's economy. Correa's faction won approximately 61% of the seats in the National Assembly (80 of 130 Assembly Members).

The Ecuadorian Constituent Assembly first convened on 29 November 2007 in Montecristi, and was given six months to write a new constitution, with a possible two-month extension. Read Less

Last week the president personally attended the trial while thuggish supporters threw eggs and bottles at the defendants outside the courthouse. To no one’s surprise, the provisional judge hearing the case quickly ruled in the president’s favor, sentencing Mr. Palacio and the three El Universo directors to three years in prison and awarding $40 million in damages to Mr. Correa – an amount that exceeds the total value of the newspaper. As of 16 February 2012, the National Court of Justice (Ecuador's highest court) confirmed the lower court's award of $40 milion in damages, as well as the three-year prison sentences against a journalist and three executives of the newspaper. Read Less

Correa declared that the protests look for to destabilize his government and he called to their followers to “to continue mobilized up to March 22”. “to resist peacefully. March 8 go to repletar the Square of the Independence (in front of Government's Palacio, in Quito) to tell them: ‘Here is and this revolution doesn't stop it anything neither nobody! '”, he manifested. Those in favor of the Government also announced the realization of countermarches in diverse domestic counties, as in Cuenca where they carried out a concentration that gathered around fifteen thousand people.

According to the Cedatos, Correa began his presidency with a 73 percent approval rating. An opinion poll carried out by Profiles of Opinion in the cities of Quito and Guayaquil, in March 2012, it indicates that 80,5% of those interviewed qualifies as positive the president's administration Correa. Read Less