Ecuador’s president, Lenín Moreno, shook up his cabinet and appointed six new ministers this week. The move appears to confirm what many of his critics on the Left have long suspected, which is that Moreno is moving the country increasingly towards the Right. That is, they say he is reversing the policies under the previous government, Rafael Correa, who pursued a fairly progressive agenda, particularly in foreign and economic affairs. For example, President Moreno’s new Minister of the Economy, Richard Martinez, comes directly from the country’s business class, where he worked as a consultant for the Chamber of Industry and Production, and he also was president of Ecuador’s Business Committee, which is the country’s main business association.









Greg Wilpert of the Real News spoke with Guillaume Long, former Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ecuador under former President Rafael Correa, about the rapid turn of the new Ecuadorian administration towards neoliberal policies, under Lenín Moreno.





Long gave some impressive details about Moreno's actions so far, proving that he acted like a US agent. His mission is to destroy Correa's legacy and throw Ecuador into the hands of the US empire by implementing destructive neoliberalism. This is obviously part of an ongoing operation through which the US imperialist hawks seek to wipe out the last Leftist governments in Latin America . Moreno's behavior made Long finally resign from his position.





As Long said:





I felt Moreno was moving more and more towards the Right, sort of had a creeping conservative agenda that was becoming more and more difficult to reconcile with.





What I felt Moreno was doing, was kind of reintroducing the US in kind of security and geopolitics and moving away from what we had espoused during the Citizens’ Revolution, which was more kind of sovereign, non-aligned foreign policy based on Latin American integration and sort of an intelligence incursion in a multipolar world. And not just this kind of return within the US kind of imperial fold.





So, I felt that it wasn’t possible to be Moreno’s personal representative in the UN anymore. There were a number of issues that I disagreed with.





Moreno, also, by January, had made it pretty clear that he wanted to obliterate the legacy of his predecessor, Rafael Correa. I think Moreno was elected in 2017 basically on a platform promising the continuation of the Citizens’ Revolution, of Rafael Correa’s political process. And so, I felt that there was a betrayal there. He was obliterating it rhetorically. He was blaming everything on his predecessor. But he was also organizing a referendum, which actually occurred in February, attempting to bury the legacy of Correa and to prevent Rafael Correa from ever coming back in Ecuador in politics. One of the questions of the referendum was aimed at barring any type of reelection.





The situation has got significantly worse. There’s an even greater departure from the legacy ten years of the Citizens’ Revolution of Rafael Correa’s government. We’ve really gone Right-wing now.





The new Minister of Economy and Finance, was actively involved in the campaign of Moreno’s rival in the 2017 elections that Moreno won. Moreno was elected against Guillermo Lasso - very, very neoliberal. So, Moreno wasn’t the perfect candidate, but facing the threat of a Lasso government we were all very anxious for his victory.





What Moreno did over the next few months is, little by little, have people from the Lasso camp coming to his government. He said this was all about ‘dialogue’ and ‘being very inclusive.’ Being inclusive and dialogue is a good thing, but he actually said at one point, in a conversation with bankers, that he was very grateful for them. Those are the words he employed. He was very grateful for them not having voted for him and that he was very angry. He had actually used the word hatred, ‘I have a lot of hatred for the people who voted for me.’





It’s taken him a year to get where he wanted to get to, which is to bring the neoliberals on board to run the country. And this new Minister of Economy and Finance, is a complete neoliberal, he is not a moderate neoliberal. He’s a very radical neoliberal who believes in the whole neoliberal recipe, which is the direct opposite of what we did for ten years when we had a much more heterodox, a much more sort of anti-austerity program, which allowed for growth, redistribution, for the reduction of poverty, of inequality, and was very successful. I think Ecuador was one of the most successful economic models in the “pink tide” for Latin America for a long time.









Moreno’s actions also explain why Ecuador actually starts to turn against Julian Assange. From the impressive details given, it is obvious that Moreno acts like a puppet of Washington who was seeking to sabotage Ecuador's course towards Left under Rafael Correa. The whole story and recent developments show that the ringer tightens around Julian Assange and that under the traitor Moreno, Ecuador methodically pushes him too into the hands of the US empire.





Recall that recently, Rafael Correa, in an exclusive interview with the Intercept , denounced his country’s current government’s decision for blocking Julian Assange from receiving visitors in its Embassy in London as a form of “torture” and a violation of Ecuador’s duties to protect Assange’s safety and well-being. Correa said this took place in the context of Ecuador no longer maintaining “ normal sovereign relations with the American government — just submission. ”



