Small Brother prevails in media clamp-down

One big item has dominated the airwaves here in Ecuador since my recent arrival in the country: the Supreme Court ruling in the Correa v El Universo case. The judges upheld the earlier verdicts that condemn Emilio Palacio, former op-ed writer of the Guayaquil newspaper El Universo, as well as the three co-directors of the same newspaper, Carlos, César and Nicolas Pérez, to a $40m fine and a three year sentence in prison, on the charge of defamation of a public authority.

Ecuadorian president Correa calls press scrutiny of his actions to a halt (source)

The reason for this hefty sentence is an op-ed written by Emilio Palacio on February 6, 2011, in which he questions the reasons behind president Rafael Correa's proposal to pardon the alleged perpetrators of the September 30, 2010 coup and attack at civilians in a hospital in Quito. The op-ed frames the president's actions in quite strong wordings (Correa is being referred to as 'Dictator'), hinting at an absence of evidence against the coup-stagers as the real motivation behind the presidential pardon. After highlighting several inconsistencies in the coup story, allegedly framed by the president himself to save face for a series of misjudged actions following the police protests of that very 30th of September, Palacio ends his piece with the advice that, given the different legal status of the pardon (compared with a general amnesty), "the president might himself face lawsuits once he steps down, for having ordered the indiscriminate shooting, without previous warning, of a hospital full with innocent civilians."

The ruling has stirred a lot of upheaval in the national and international (mainly Spanish) press, as it basically sets a dangerous precedent to restrict press freedom, whenever critical of the president's (or another public authority, for that matter) actions. Not only is the ruling's realm quite profound, several questionable procedural irregularities have occurred along the road. To name but a few: the first, 150-page ruling in this case was issued by a judge - who had just started that very day - in less than 24 hours; several judges who sat on the appeal process had been replaced while the appeal was ongoing; and the accuser's legal team has been reported to have exerted heavy pressure on the judges sitting in on this case (even up to the point that the ruling had been written in large part by Correa's lawyers).

There are some more striking elements in this case. Shouldn't the basis of the ruling be evidence presented by Correa's lawyers to prove that Palacio has willingly and knowingly written lies (ie. defamated) about the president? And why suing and condemning the directors of the newspaper, while they have offered to rectify any factual errors upon the president's providing evidence thereof (which Correa kindly declined to do)? No evidence has been reported to have been presented to justify the ridiculously high fines to compensate for the 'moral damage' Correa has suffered as a result of that op-ed (isn't a right to response more in order to rectify such mistakes written in newspapers?). Remarkably, the magnitude of the fines and jail sentence has been justified by Correa's public office, whereas the president has claimed all along this trial to have taken this case to court as a layman, to show that even laymen should not tolerate that newspapers write lies about them.

The sentencing in this case seems to have forgone any measure of proportionality, leaving little margin of interpretation other than setting an example to rein in press scrutiny of high public offices. Worryingly, this has not been the only sign of restricting press freedom in Ecuador. Upon the president's introduction, the National Assembly has passed a law limiting press freedom during elections, and another law is under discussion to set up a media regulatory board to vet the content of Ecuadorian media. Also, two other journalists (Juan Carlos Calderón and Christian Zurita) have been fined $2m for their 'defamatory' book The Big Brother (El Gran Hermano), in which they disclose evidence of cronyism in granting big state contracts to the president's older brother Fabricio Correa. Commenting on his small brother's legal escapades, big brother Correa stated that "one doesn't even observe such acts of barbarity in African dictatorships." The last word has not yet been spilled, so much is certain.