By IPS Correspondents
QUITO, May 29 1998 (IPS)

Although indigenous communities account for a full one-third of Ecuador’s 12 million inhabitants, no presidential candidate running in Sunday’s elections has taken up their full platform of demands.

Two million of the country’s nearly seven million voters belong to the Quichua, Shuara and smaller Amerindian communities. But their organisations have not banded together in the present elections.

The leaders of the Confederation of Indigenous Organisations of Ecuador (Conaie) and the Federation of Peasants, Indigenous and Blacks (Fenocin) have come out in support of centre-left candidate Freddy Ehlers, a TV producer running for the presidency for the second time.

The president of Fenocin, Pedro de la Cruz – who backs Ehlers – told IPS that no candidate has taken up all of the indigenous groups’ demands.

“Those who are closest to our proposals are Ehlers” and former social democratic president Rodrigo Borja, said De la Cruz, who is seeking a seat in the Chamber of Deputies.

Over the past three years, Ecuador’s indigenous communities have been fighting for recognition of their collective rights, their system of territorial community organisation, their leaders as public authorities, and their common-law practices.

The indigenous groups are also demanding an overhaul of the Agrarian Law to provide greater access to land and resources for agricultural production, on which their livelihoods largely depend.

Both Ehlers and Borja support several of the groups’ proposals, but neither have pronounced themselves on the recognition of indigenous systems of common law nor the power of local indigenous authorities.

Indigenous systems of meting out justice – with punishments ranging from warnings to public whippings, depending on the infraction in question – are not legally recognised today.

But one key element conspiring against the unity of the Amerindian groups are the discrepancies among their leaders regarding participation in a system from which they have been marginalised for 500 years.

Several leaders of communities based in the Amazon jungle region are calling for the reestablishment of the Ministry of Indigenous Affairs, created by former president Abdala Bucaram in 1996 but shut down by the caretaker government of Fabian Alarcon the following year.

But most indigenous leaders are opposed to forming part of, and thus being subject to, the state apparatus.

The Planning Council for Development of Indigenous Peoples has obtained a close to 50 million dollar World Bank loan to fund projects focusing on the country’s poorest indigenous communities over the next four years. But the projects have come to a standstill due to the Alarcon administration’s failure to disburse the matching government funds that are supposed to accompany the credit.

Even more pressing than the need for a candidate to take up their demands is the indigenous groups’ interest in seeing the newly elected government accept the proposed amendments to the constitution approved by a National Constituent Assembly early this year. The amendments, which are also pending congressional ratification, reflect several proposals on the collective rights of Ecuador’s Amerindians.

Indigenous candidates are a small minority among the 21,000 individuals running for the presidency, the 121-seat single- chamber Congress and hundreds of posts in municipal and departmental governments.

A Supreme Electoral Court ban on exit polls means the preliminary results of Sunday’s elections will only be announced after all voting station have closed.

The president of the Supreme Electoral Court, Patricio Vivanco, ensured the press that the elections would be clean. “No one can doubt the transparency of the electoral process. In Ecuador there is no possibility of fraud,” the official said in response to accusations launched by the Ecuadorian Roldosista Party headed by former president Abdala Bucaram.

Last year Bucaram was impeached when Congress threw its support behind demands for the populist president’s removal set forth loudly by broad sectors of Ecuadorian society. Since then, centre- right Alarcon has served as caretaker president.

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