There's nothing quite like waking up to BBC News 24. Like the wind blowing softly on your face until you're completely aware and refreshed, News 24 drones on with a tedious sense of repetitive inevitability, covering the same dull and uninteresting ground over and over and over again ad nauseum until you're wide awake, screaming in defiance at the television as caffeine pumps through your veins and the reporter says, "And as you may already know, something is about to happen behind me in the next few hours..." for the millionth time.
Anyway, today was a little different. News 24 briefly mentioned, Ecuadorian president Rafael Correa has declared a state of emergency after being attacked and besieged by his own police force. A helicopter evacuation of the mauled president was unable to land, and he had to be rescued from a hospital by soldiers after disaffected policemen angry at new austerity measures surrounded his room.
I mean, this might not seem too strange in a turbulent country like Ecuador with a strange pseudo left-wing 'president'. Indeed, it is the stuff of stereotypes. But think about it for a second. Any traditional sort of uprising of disaffected workers tends to be, ya know, a bit working class and not the police. Now, I'm not suggesting that the police were acting out of anything other than self-interest, and certainly not class consciousness. It must be said at this point that I don't particularly like the police in any nation. Well, it doesn't need to be said, but there, I said it, and why can wait for another time, I suppose.
What does seem strange is how willing the police were to fight the powers that be. Traditionally, coppers are those unimaginative types - unlike soldiers - who tend to doggedly follow the state line and not really kick off about anything unless its uncooperative newspaper vendors, in which case its with great vengeance and furious anger. But I digress. They're certainly not as cool as firemen, anyway, as this video aptly demonstrates. Airports occupied, roadblocks were set up, and there was the general widespread unrest that you get when politicians are making tough decisions that adversely affect people who are pretty angry about it.
Of course, this wouldn't be weird enough in itself to hold my macabre interest in the subject. I don't sympathise with the police, really. Only the genuine working class people that are the same regardless of nation. Anyway, without going on a political tangent anymore, check this madness out. Being the kind of over dramatic, delusional and desperate to appear as some sort of heroic revolutionary figure that Correa is, he did something that is both wonderfully stupid and fantastically amusing. At a rally attempting to calm a tense situation down, Correa tried to show his heart was in the right place, and it kind of worked, since people seemed pretty determined to find out exactly where his heart was, and then presumably tear it out. This is from BBC News.
"In an emotional speech to soldiers from Quito's main barracks, President Correa tore at his shirt and said: "If you want to kill the president, here he is. Kill him, if you want to. Kill him if you are brave enough."
Moments later he was forced to flee the barracks wearing a gas mask when tear gas was fired by the protesters, and he was taken to hospital. "
Perhaps not the wisest thing to say.
Anyway, its hard to have a great deal of sympathy for the American trained economist who stated he would neither forget nor forgive, promised harsh reprisals, instituted a state of emergency and vocalised about the possibility of disbanding congress. Call me cynical or call me naive, but he doesn't really seem like the most decent bloke anyway. More like a shady Del Trotter character taken to a bizarre extreme and at the last possible second being spliced with an over-the-top Shakespearean actor. So yeah. A real odd scenario to wake up to, but it made me smile. Which might make me sound like a bit of a terrifying psychopath, but anyone who stands in front of an angry mob, tears open his shirt and screams "kill me if you are brave enough" has to be either mad or in stand up comedy. And I'm taking the latter, because the other one is frankly depressing.
Another account of the Ecuadorian 'coup' can be found on this fella's blog. Well worth a read for people who are interested in politics or labour under misaprehensions about the current regime.
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