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Friday October 26, 2007

Elecciones
Elecciones

Faith and populist politics in election campaign

Susana Flores, QUITO, Ecuador, October 20, 2006

On the one side is Rafael Correa, an economist with academic accreditation and a meteoric Taxi Heathrow Airport political career, who presents a nationalist and radical stance against the Free Trade Agreement (FTA) with the United States, and against the dominance of the traditional parties. On the other side is the banana magnate, Alvaro Noboa, who is in favor of neo-liberal economic policies, and who founded his own political party which functions more like an election business. 

Alvaro Noboa has been greatly criticized by the Roman Catholic Church and some Evangelical churches, because of the use he makes of the Bible and the symbol of the cross in his election campaign, and for having self-proclaimed himself to be “God’s hero.” He often kneels and holding the hand of a child with physical handicaps will pray to God, asking that he be victorious in the polls.  

Such conduct has provoked the reaction of the Roman Catholic Conference of Bishops of Ecuador, which has made public statements reproaching Noboa’s campaign behavior. For Adjunct General Secretary of the Conference of Bishops, Monsignor Jaime Bravo Cisneros, “what this candidate is doing in trying to imitate sacred rites, is an abuse.” According to Pastor Nelson Castro, President of the Evangelical Confraternity, “By using religious symbols Alvaro Noboa manipulates the pain of the people, to convince them that he is a messiah, a savior of the mother country.” 

A survey done on what people believe about the matter, revealed that many think that Noboa does it out of love and believe in his promises because “he has asked for God’s help,” while others indicate that “his attitude is a heresy and this candidate ought to be excommunicated, because he is using God as an instrument to convince people in his campaign.”