After Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa issued a decree Sept. 12 eliminating the country’s subsidy on diesel fuel, predictably the country exploded in protest. Overnight, the price of diesel shot up by 50%, affecting the cost of transportation, farming, food, etc. Oligarch Noboa should have known better. Two previous Presidents, Lenin Moreno in 2019 and Guillermo Lasso in 2022, had both tried to eliminate the fuel subsidy, but were forced to backtrack when violent protests erupted nationwide.
But as the scion of his father’s banana empire, and fully aligned with U.S. President Donald Trump and Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Noboa vows not to rescind his decree or to negotiate with protesters, chief among which is the large Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities (CONAIE). He refers to protests as “acts of terrorism,” and protesters as linked to organized crime and narcoterrorist networks, which has enraged the protesters. With a state of exception declared in seven northern provinces, Noboa has deployed the military aggressively to repress the protests, such that UN Special Rapporteur for the Defense of Human Rights Mary Lawler issued a statement, underlining that the right to protest peacefully is a fundamental human right, reported the daily Primicias. UN Secretary General António Guterres has decried the violence in the country and called on all actors to seek a negotiated solution.
